Driftwood: Tales

Beloved Darkness

When Freddy Gordon hired in at J. Carrol Grady publishing, he expected to rise to the top - not quickly, necessarily - but eventually.

This, of course, never happened.

Since day one, if there were odd jobs, from mopping, to fetching lunch, or coffee, Freddy was the one they sent.

The phrase: "...we'll send'in the kid." had become synonymous with him, in particular.

There were other people, working numbly in their cubicles, filing papers, shuffling papers, editing grammar, formatting structure, and falling into the daily routines he had still yet to know, and may never get to know.

Freddy's fair education - a bachelor in literature, and even some minor publishing experience, both as the publisher - counted for nothing, here.
He ran an E-Magazine for some time - before everyone discovered that real magazines were better - and some of his works were published; nothing terribly big, a few poems, and a few short stories.

Before, he was not certain where he would end up.
Now, he was certain he would not end up anywhere at all.

That was the air in J. Carrol Grady publishing.

Freddy had a better life, once.

Once.

Before his big move, he lived in a nice enough apartment, with a pretty girl who gave the above average blow job, even if she insisted she keep her virginity until they were married.

Somehow, for some reason, he was not surprised to find she was sleeping with someone behind his back.
He was however vaguely disgusted that the person was an on again, off again vagrant.

He knew.

He would see him, time, to time, cleaning random windshields for change, or sleeping under an overpass during the spring, and summer.

Gross.

It was a miracle that Freddy never caught some sexually transmitted disease, though he guessed it was more likely from the abundance of a good blow job, and lack of actual sexual intercourse.

This had all, of course, been once upon a time.

Now, he ate, slept, shit, shaved, and showered in a studio apartment with the dimensions of a giant shoebox.

The walls were uneven, and the floors creaked in the dryer weather, and sagged with the slightest hints of moisture.

This was his life now.

"I dunno, Chuck. Fuck. We'll send'in the kid." The last words Freddy Gordon heard, before the editor hung up his phone, and stepped out of his office. By then, Freddy was seated comfortably as possible on a black pleather office chair, just outside the door.

The editor, J. Carroll Grady, peered over half-moon bifocal spectacles. "Y'hear any of that, kid?"

Kid.

Freddy hated when they called him kid, but it was better than the names they used to call him, and not the traditional accidentals, like Frankie, Finny, or once even, Fergus.

"Well, son, speak up!" Grady's impatience was only matched by his tireless discord for the 'lessers working in their cubicles.

'Lessers. He hated that term, too. It was something Freddy hoped to outgrow, professionally speaking. From a 'lesser, to a better.

Better was after all, better.

Grady let out an abrupt cough. "You catch a case o'the adult onset retardation, kid?"

"No'sir."
No'sir. Nossir. No, sir. Freddy tried hard as he could to adopt the strange accent, and dialect Grady spoke.

It never came out a hundred percent genuine.

"So'd you hear?"

Freddy decided to lie, and shook his head. "No'sir. Notta word."

Grady examined him a moment, still peering over his spectacles. He gave a single, concise shake of the head. "Ain't goin'a move up telling halfcocked shit-stain lies like that! Work on your lying more, Feddic."

"Freddy"

"Whatever. Cooley's out sick today. Here's your assignment." He tossed a large envelope at Freddy, who caught it coolly midair. Grady looked almost impressed. "Do these right, 'might even earn a promotion."

Freddy fought the urge to ask what failure meant, but Grady clearly had it in mind.

"Y'do this wrong - well - there's worse work to do here than janitorial."

"'Won't let'cha down, sir." Freddy tucked his assignment, a fresh 8x11 yellow envelope made from heavy stock paper, under his arm.

"...an' Frieda? Y'stop talkin' like that, 'hear? No one here talks like that."

Freddy bowed his head a moment, feeling red warmth in his cheeks. "Yes, sir. Won't let you down, sir."

♚ ♚ ♚

It was true, the car itself being a relic.

It got good mileage, but Freddy suspected it had to do with the fact that the majority of the car was gutted out.

The back seat, gone.
The spare tire, gone.
Heater core? Gone.
Air conditioner? Gone.

It was a wonder his car was legal on the street, save the fact that both the breaks, and the emergency break worked well enough.

About ten miles back he passed a white sign, paint peeling, edges rusted. The sign read:

Hope Valley Fifty Miles

The car chugged along, as usual. The skies darkened somewhere along the twenty mile mark, and the winds were tossing him all over the road. It was all he could do not to lose control of his car.

Then, as though the wind were not enough, it began to rain.

The real irony, though, was neither the winds, nor the rain. It was not the fact that he could not roll up his window, or turn on the radio, or that his cellular phone was sitting in his locker, at work, fully charged.

The real irony was when his car broke down right at the forty-five mile marker.

Hope Valley Population: 78

Freddy stared at the dashboard a moment.
The plastic shield that usually protected the odometer, and all of the working gears, and dials, was gone.

The battery light was not on.

None of the dials showed any indication what was wrong.

He turned the key.
Not even a click.

Fine.

Unbuckling, Freddy reached across the cab, leaning a shoulder down beneath the passenger seat (which was mostly a seat cover over bare springs, and a patchy foam pillow), and pulled the yellow envelope free.

He opened the envelope, and put the CD back inside it.

Above, and beyond the line of duty, Freddy thought, and allowed himself a brief smile.

Five miles into town.

He'd find a phone, call this Jacques kid, and ask him to meet up. Then he'd make another phone call, and somebody would send something his way, so he could get the hell out of town.

Freddy called this his worst case scenario, and with a self-affirming nod, opened his door, and rose out of his piece of shit car.

♚ ♚ ♚

"Seventy-eight, my ass." Freddy said, looking around the empty, cracked streets of Hope Valley.
He passed a gas station, overgrown with weeds. The pumps were rusted testaments to a time of doo-wop, and rock-and-roll.

He imagined the gas station in its day, chrome, whites, blues, and brushed steel; men in white attire, faded oil stains, and if he imagined any harder he could hear The Chordettes singing Mr. Sandman playing over the speakers.

The slowly rusting, decomposing heaps of a few cars were still parked alongside parts of the cracked, and crumbling asphalt streets, crabgrass of varying shades of yellow laced between the road and cracked concrete sidewalks. Fully restored any one of those cars could have easily found itself in a James Dean film, or in that one musical, Grease.

Freddy sighed. He had to perform in Grease in both high school, and college, and both times he played Kenickie. Freddy hummed Summer Days as he strolled along the only-slightly-creepy abandoned town that nineteen-fifty-five forgot, until he got to his line in the song.

"Tell me more, tell me more, did she put up a fight?"

The only slightly appalling rapey undertones of Kenickie's line always left him feeling, well, greasy.

Freddy crossed an auto repair garage next door to the gas station, and saw a young pine growing out of the garage bay, its aluminum door propped up by a block of old wood.

He could hear skittering echo through the dark recess of the garage as he passed by.

There was absolutely no one in Hope Valley. The only phone booth he saw was missing the actual phone itself, the silver metal coil had rust spots, and frayed wire hanging out in wild, stiff colors, some remnants longer than others. Others were bearing bare copper wire.

Rain came now in irregular, fat drops, splattering on the dirty concrete sidewalks like insects on a bus windshield.
The winds picked up in gusts now, dying down, whispering through old, dead trees, and branches, and picking up again.

The town itself was small.

A village.

A hamlet.

There were old, boarded up houses of colonial, Bostonian, and Victorian style littering random places on the outskirts of the town.
In the distance, just before the city limits, Freddy spotted the warm yellow glow of soft light flickering through brightly lit windows.
The Victorian style home was within walking distance (everything was, considering he had to walk anyway). He figured he would make it there soon enough.

♚ ♚ ♚

By the time Freddy made it to the house - which in reality looked now more like a manor up close - there were no lights. The windows were dusty, however intact, and the pain was chipping off of the horizontal wooden slats of the mansion.

"Fuck my life." Freddy turned away from the house. He surveyed the open streets, realizing for the first time that there were neither cars, nor any signs that a vehicle had come this way in some time.

There was a brief click, and a groan. Freddy turned, sharply, and took an involuntary step back.

The front door was wide open.

"No." Freddy shook his head, backpedaling into the road. Despite the lack of traffic, cars, or people, he found himself looking both ways. "I saw this movie. The guy died."

The door stayed open.

Clouds gathering into a dense blanket across the sky, thunder rumbled again. Freddy felt the impression as though the sky itself was hungry, and the lack of traffic, cars, and people were no coincidence to this - yet of course this could not be the reason.

Still.

Wherever a thought like that came from, it wasn't a bright, or warm place.

The door hung open over the entry, two granite steps would be all it took, and he would be dry, and warm - or warmer than he was now, at least.

There he was, at a crossroads.

The imminent rain, and storm. No car. No phone. No way out of town - at least not for now.

Or.

Shielding from the elements, in the very least.

"I guess." Freddy knew better than this. In every story, and movie he'd ever seen.

Ever.

When someone was presented with an ominous opportunity, and accepted it, they always died.

Or they became one of the monsters.

Even the latter of those two options was horrible. Monsters, like vampires, always said that they weren't scared anymore.
Before they were scared because they didn't understand - one little bite later, a brief exchange of blood - then they understood. It only hurt for a second.

Freddy shook his head.

That's bullshit.
It hurts for a second.
Then you die.
Then you're undead.

Then you're hungry forever, and that hurts.

That hurts more than dying to some monster, because at least then you're dead.
You're not hurting yourself, or other people because of what you've become.

The fuck with Zombies, or other unintelligent monsters.

Get bitten, and that's it.
Mindless corpse.
You're body's a host, but your mind, and soul is gone.

At least you're dead.

...and that's the point.

They always die, or turn into something worse than death.

That's exactly what he didn't want to become.

Dead, or something worse. "Stupid. Too many movies. Too many books. Too much fangoria."

Freddy held his breath, and stepped over the stairs, past the threshold.

♚ ♚ ♚

The door did not close shut behind him with a loud slam, or a soft click.

It hung on its hinges, wide open as it had before he entered. Outside, the winds were picking up.

Freddy fought the urge to call out Hello knowing that was only another opportunity for some horrible creature to kill him, and climb into his skin.

Or make him into a human leather couch, lampshade, and matching curtains.

There were plenty of shadows, but that was because there was plenty of darkness to go around.

The wall fixtures were lamps, not electrical lights.

He reached out to the door, and closed it behind him.

Darkness enveloped him, only for a moment, and then his eyes adjusted to the fading light from outside.

Freddy was good at being quiet - too good, but those days were long behind him - and he edged through the main entry, and into the parlor.

It was as he feared.
No electricity.
No phone.

Fuck.

There were antique couches, positioned around a hearth the way modern people positioned furniture around a television set.
Entire homes, where the focus of design was wherever they were watching the tube.

The hearth had a partly burned log in it, though the dust around the brickwork, and on the tongs, and poker showed its disuse.

Next to the hearth was a small bundle of cut logs, well over-seasoned wood, looking dry enough to go up in flames over so much as a spark.

The mantle held various porcelain figurines, similar to the ones his grandma kept in her lifetime, if not much older looking, and more rudimentary in their sculpture.

Looming over the mantle was a large oil painting of a girl - a young woman - in a forest green dress.

It looked like it could have been satin, or silk, or crushed velvet.

The artist captured what must have been her likeness, but was very ambiguous with the material in the dress itself.

Freddy coughed, clearing his throat.

There was dust on everything, and immediately he understood that this house, like the town itself, had not seen people in a long time.

Footprints on the dusty floorboards revealed to him that he was, and had been for some time, the only person to set foot here.

Fine, he thought.
There's no one else here.

It seemed worse, than better.
Now he was in the middle of nowhere in a town so unfrequented that it was dead.

Freddy sighed. What am I going to do?

Decisively, he trod toward the next room, which turned out to be the kitchen. In there, a table set with empty plates, and a seat at the head of the table half pulled as though someone had just risen from it.

The table, set in lace crocheted settings, was classic Victorian in design. The crystal candelabrum in the center was covered in old web. The candles were half melted, brittle wicks, and yellow with age. Sitting beneath them, beneath the candelabra, an old silver framed matches case.

Half opened, and empty. No dead match sticks anywhere in sight.

Somewhere between a halfhearted grunt, and a sigh, Freddy turned away from the kitchen. Outside, thunder crackled aggressively across the storm cloud infested sky.

He needed fire before it got really dark.

♚ ♚ ♚

In all the years working for J. Carrol Grady, he had seen, and done it all as far as odd jobs were concerned.

Every time he had to wince at the acrid smell of rat piss while cleaning the ducts, or scrape pigeon carcasses off the roof of the building, along with pigeon shit, and the random dead rat, he felt it would all come to a point where it paid off.

One certainty in working for Grady, Freddy developed a Jack-of-trades skill set.
In the very least, he could be - and was - a skilled janitor. This may have come across to many as a mundane task, but there's a certain amount of pride in knowing the difference between clean, and clean.

He could make a mean cup of coffee, serve food, and host.

He did this a few times for office mixers - which he was never invited to attend outside of service.

With all he learned in dealing with vermin, he could have been an exterminator.

None of these things were in his interest. All he ever wanted was a gig as an investigative journalist.

Freddy moved through a long hallway.

There were two doors on each wall, and one at the far end. They were all closed. He crept up on the door at the end of the hall, and knocked.

Silence.

Of course silence. Freddy felt a little ridiculous in that moment.

...but not so ridiculous.

He entered college a bright eyed kid, just out of high school. Mom, and dad were paying for college, and the world was his.

That sort of thing.

He was the chief editor for his high school newspaper, and yearbook.
His paper was always interesting, and sometimes controversial. A hybrid of tabloid, and legitimate news.

He did well - very well - for the college newspaper. He made assistant editor his freshman year, and editor the following.

There, he stayed until graduation.

During his time there, he took courses that weren't necessarily applicable to his major, but handy all the same. Criminology, and psychology.

He even took a home course on private investigation. That was a joke, if ever there were a joke of home correspondence courses, but in college he was idealistic, and he learned what he could from it, even if it wasn't for credit.

He excelled in anything journalism, or related, but was at best, average in every other class, or subject.

He did not mind then, and he did not mind now.

...but.

There was a nagging detail, one that pulled at the fringes of his attention since he set foot in the house.

Everything was covered in a thick layer of dust.
There were no evidence marks, or signs of habitation.
Everything - everything - looked like it simply stopped mid breath, and froze.

One of the easiest things for him to figure out at the office - once he got the hang of it - was finding the rats. Location was in the details, like their tiny (and sometimes not so tiny) hand, and footprints. They led him to places they frequented. Sometimes he caught them in the act of haunting a duct, or a dank corner.

There were no prints in the dust.

No skittering in the walls, or through the ceiling.

Here, the dust settled evenly, and the only evidence marks in the house were his, footprints across the floor, fingerprints, a smudge here, or there where he brushed against a surface.

Freddy paused a moment longer, his hand now on the cool crystal doorknob. He sucked in a breath of air, fought the urge to cough, and opened the door.

Freddy shivered.

A small empty bassinet stood nestled in a corner, half covered under a sheet of canvas.

Everything, or mostly, was covered under sheets.

Freddy choked back the acidic taste of bile, as the urge to look into the bassinet was choked off by the need not to.

The walls were decorated in delicate paisley wallpaper, the designs leafed in gold.
A mobile hung down over the bassinet on a long, glistening wire that could have been gold, or silver, or copper, or any of them - or none.
It hung with the same terrible, absolute, and unmistakable stillness, and silence he was now too familiar.

The same silence his car made, some few miles back on the side of the road.

Dead silence.

An engine that wouldn't turn.
A sound, even with the sound of his breathing that came hollow, and meaningless in a place that swallowed sound.
A silence where a baby should be crying, or laughing, or cooing.

Dead silence.

Freddy closed his eyes under the threat of tears, and backed out, closing the door as he did. Thankfully, there was no crying, or laughing, or cooing from the room.

There were four more doors, excluding whatever was upstairs.

Upstairs.

Freddy shook his head.

Two of the remaining four doors were closets. The other two were smaller rooms than the room at the far end of the hall. Empty.

Disappointing.

The lower level was, with exception to the baby's room, a parlor room, a dining room, a kitchen, and a laundry room, complete with tub, washboard, and wringer.

Freddy was losing light.

He made his way around, hoping to heart he understood the basic floor plan enough to find the foyer.

♚ ♚ ♚

The stairwell was magnificent, not one, but two sets of stairs arcing upward on either wall. The stairs were a black, dense looking wood, covered in a plush, dirty, though red carpeting. The carpeting was accented by a black, and gold border, complementing the gold leaf banisters.

Upstairs was the last place Freddy wanted to be. It was no man's land. Irrevocable. Inescapable. Whatever his gut insisted he was afraid of, he swore it would be on the second level.

The same gut instinct said whatever he needed for light would be up there, too.

The banister rails were cool to the touch, grimy, but dry. The air, Freddy noticed with mild abandon, was very easy to breathe for a place that suggested itself so old, and so untouched. He closed his eyes for a moment, drawing in a deep breathe. Freddy raised a foot, and stepped forward, releasing his breath as he took the first step up the stairwell.

♚ ♚ ♚

To his relief, and possibly a subtle horror, Freddy found light much easier than he expected.

Freddy guessed correctly the first room - just right of the stairwell ascending - was the guest room.
Within, the basic essentials of guest life in a Victorian era home.
The vanity chest of drawers, a four post full size bed, night stands, and lamps.

On the vanity, a small silver match case, not unlike the empty one on the kitchen table.
Next to it, a hybrid perfume-lamp bottle, this turned out to be a lighter.

It still has a little fuel.

"Deus ex Machina." Freddy smiled, holding the silver match case to eye level.

It rattled in his hand.

"Take that, Euripides."

Freddy open the silver case, adorned in etched paisleys and inlaid with a golden looking filigree.
He pulled one of eight matches out of the box, and stared at it.
A round timber stick, small, thicker than modern matches, and the match head was a quarter the length of the matchstick itself.

Freddy struck it against the strike pad. It lit up, maybe a little too well. He held it steady and moved toward the lamps on the end table. The wicks lit as easily as the match, and there was light.

This is too easy. Freddy shook his head, and answered his thoughts aloud.
"No, this is coincidence. Enough already, with the magical thinking."

Freddy was grateful to the silence that greeted him.

He lit the second lamp, the wall sconces and some candles he found in the next room. The manor was now, at least, no longer under threat of darkness.

Thunder rumbled aggressively, and rain began as though cued by nature itself to set the tone. Freddy shrugged it off.

After an hour, between the upstairs, and down, the house glowed warmly with a life seeming all its own.

Freddy made his way into the master bedroom, and sat carefully on the large bed in its center.
It was soft, and not at all dusty as everything else so far.

The bed was made.
He could rest for a moment.

Only a moment.

♚ ♚ ♚

Freddy sat up, eyes wide, adrenaline coursing through him, scattering his bearings if only for a moment.

Had it all been a dream?

Freddy took a deep, deliberate, slow breath, exhaled, and surveyed the room.

No, it was not a dream.

Freddy sat up, posturing himself on his elbows. The room seemed excruciatingly bright for simple lamplight.
He rolled his head first to the left, and then the right.
He was under the covers, the rain outside pelting the manor, and windows heavily.

The room was surprisingly warm.

Freddy groaned, rubbing his forehead for a moment, and then massages his face.

How long was he out?

A blur of movement caused him to double take, the motion something between an invisible shadow, and a blur like those cast from heatwaves, or fumes.

Freddy shook his head, but saw nothing more, though he felt something akin to an impression, or the impression of a sound.

The impression of a giggle.

Not some kindergarteners squeal of joy, or excitement. It was less a sound, than a feeling, the thrill you feel when you hear the musical laughter of a loved one.

...without the sound of their musical laughter.

♚ ♚ ♚

That was all Freddy needed to react. He burst out of the bed, to the door way, and up to the stairwell.

The sconces lining the stairwell flickered, and went out as a cold rush of air passed through Freddy.
Downstairs, he saw the light flicker, grow dimmer, and flicker again.

Finally, there were only stairwells descending into absolute darkness.

"No, hell no!" Freddy turned on his heel and bolted down the hall back for the master bedroom.
The doors closed firmly in the hall as he ran, until finally the master bedroom was closed up.

Freddy, unable to stop, ran into the door full force.

The door did not yield, and Freddy found himself flat on his back, staring at the ceiling.

The sound of a girl's laughter echoed through the hallway, from above him, and all around him.

Freddy rubbed his temples, climbing to his feet. "Ouch. This isn't funny!"

The giggle, again.

This time is sounded closer, less disembodied.

He thought he saw the shimmering blur of green silk, as a fleeting shadow dashed past him.

Then, silence.

Gritting his teeth, Freddy found himself walking on wobbling legs, uncertain if it was fear, adrenaline, or from running into the door as fast and hard as he did.

Faint footsteps in the hallway, fast this time, but not running. Freddy inched toward the hall, regaining his bearings.

"Wait!"

The footsteps sped up.

They stopped suddenly to the sound of creaking, groaning wood.
There was a thud in the hallway, and it was silent.

Freddy crept along the way.

He could sense someone holding their breath, keeping their silence as though they were locked in an unspoken game of hide, and seek... but he wasn't having it.

Not when his job - his life as he knew it - was on the line.

Outside, gale force winds hammered fat droplets of rain into the old house. He could hear the splatter as water rattled top-thinning windows, and pelted the shingles on the roof.

There.
He heard it.

She exhaled.
In his ear.

Freddy swung an arm out instinctively, and felt his arm pass through something.
It felt solid, but not. It was like a thick, cool electric water. He felt an immediate smack along the right of his face.

The sound was very real.

Hmph! The sensation in the air swam around him, and the presence, whatever it was - wherever she was, began to fade away.

Freddy sighed, feeling stupid.

He thanked God he wasn't in a horror movie. No, He thought with a level head: My story is more akin to a badly written attempt at fiction.

Silence hung in the air a moment, and Freddy glanced around a moment, unable to shake the feeling that he was being watched by more than one presence.
He itched nervously at the back of his neck, and chocked at least some of it as paranoia.

Like anyone would ever read his story anyway. A twenty-something neurotic self-loathing janitor wanna-be journalist.

Freddy closed his eyes, and slowed his breathing, steadying his voice.
"My name is Frederick - Freddy - Gordon. My car broke down a way back. I need a phone - a telephone. I couldn't find one. Can you help me?"

The hair on the back of his neck stood up.

No. He felt her say.

There was a definite current in the air, the same energy he felt in an electric storm, or near the generators in the basement at J. Carrol Brady Publishing.

"I don't believe in ghosts." He said in a tone that reflected fact, but a voice that resembled fear. "I'm a Christian."

Good for you.

Freddy got the impression that it - she - wasn't too far away from him.
Idle conversation wasn't doing any good, considering that she wasn't really talking.
For all he knew, and it was likely, it could all be his imagination.
It certainly made sense, considering the strange circumstances.

"You will have to wait until after the storm." Her voice carried this time, in a whisper.

Faint enough to be a breeze, strong enough that he could tell for certain it was in fact a girl.

"You can talk."

He felt her shaking her head.

"You can't talk?"

I can... but...

Freddy felt the sudden urge to stretch, and yawn. "...but it makes you tired."

The room grew a little cooler. It wasn't an unpleasant sensation, the feeling of cold in his bones. "Where are you?"

Knocking from the rafters.

"If you're trying not to scare me, you're doing a terrible, terrible job. I'm not used to this."

Whoever is?

He shrugged. "I'm not going to go up into the attic. I saw this movie. The dumb guy dies. I don't want to be that guy."

Her presence shifted in the hallway. I'm not going to hurt you.

"No, but maybe the evil presence that is imprisoning you here will. Or the curse. Or the object you're bound to."

Idiot.

"I read what the experts on the afterlife say."

...if they're not dead, they're not experts.

Behind him, there was a brief clack of sliding metal, followed by a hiss of stale air.
He heard, rather than saw the ladder descending, touching lightly on the carpeted hall.

"No."

...why not?

"I don't want to die."

No one wants to die. I'll take away your lights...

"You're not inspiring a lot of confidence in me, uh..."

Fereshte.

"Bless you."

There was an empty silence, where all at once her presence was gone.
The hall was quiet the way a library is quiet, or an empty garage is quiet.
Then, at once her presence was back, heavily, and he felt a subtle pat on the back of his head.

Jerk.

Freddy shook his head. "I don't believe in ghosts. I'm sorry, eh - Fere..."

Fereshte. Fair. Esh. Teh.

"...Fereshte. I'm overtired, terrified of this empty town, and this empty house, and this storm, and just about everything in between."

There is no one else.

"In this house?"

...in this town.
More knocking from the attic rafters. Deliberate knocking. Shave and a haircut.

"...two bits." Freddy whispered, and then: "Fine. I admit you're definitely here, but I'm not going into the attic of an old house in the middle of an old town where there's no phones, or cars, or - "

- escape.

"That's not funny." Freddy took two steps toward the stairwell.

It was pitch black down stairs.

He could hear the deep sound of ticking now, the sound made by a pendulum, its sway in time echoing from a void he could not hope to see through, no less navigate.

Even the blind would call it darkness.

Please.

He sat in the lingering air of her pleading. He could literally smell her, the faint scent of musk and roses, like a subtle perfume in the otherwise stale air.
He shook his head. "I want to see you. If anything, out of morbid curiosity. I can't."

...please?

"I'm barely a reporter. Not even a reporter. I have one job to do, and if I don't do it... well there's worse things than mopping floors."

...like being dead, and alone in an empty town by yourself?

"Don't play the guilt trip on me, I don't even know you! You could be some demon, or some succubus bent on swallowing my soul."

Succubus?

"...nothing. I think I've been spending too many hours reading erotic-horror on the internet."

...what's a succubus?

"Look, nevermind okay?" Freddy blushed. "I don't want to talk to you about what I may, or may not read eagerly when the mood strikes, alright?"

Jerk.

"Fuck my life!" Freddy said, throwing his arms up into the air. "I'm so done with this!"

Visit me.

"No."

...how about now?

"No."

Now?

He gritted his teeth, and actually felt one of his molars crack.

It hurt.

He stifled the pain by squeezing his eyes shut tight. There was a brief flash in his squeezed-shut-eyes, like being punched, or getting hit with a baseball.

He saw her - or what he could only assume was Fereshte.

A briefest glimpse of green, on green, pale olive skin, and the blackest of blue-black hair, thick, and curly.
Her expression was in mourning, eyebrows slanted in a sorrowful furrow. Hazel-green eyes imploring.
Her slender arms rested balefully at her sides.

...please Freddy. Just once?

♚ ♚ ♚

"This is so stupid." Freddy stood at the precipice of the attic, looking down the ladder. "I am so stupid!"

The dark hallway flickered into soft orange light, as the lamps below re-lit.

"...'that you?"

Yes.

"Fereshte?"

A giggle echoed through the attic. Freddy shivered.

"That's really unsettling."

Your hang ups aren't my problem. I like the way you say my name.

"This just doesn't happen!" Freddy stepped away from the ladder. "There are no ghosts."

Clearly.

"I'm having a fucking nervous breakdown."

The attic flickered. After a moment, soft light from a dozen candles, at least.

Freddy eyes adjusted slowly. After a few moments, he could see the attic in its surprising splendor. He expected the attic would be in disarray, old sheets covering old stores furniture, crates or boxes, maybe old chests filled with whatever wonders of their time; he relied too much on movies, and fiction to argue his realty.

Freddy snorted, suppressing a chuckle.

What is funny?

"Reality."

Fereshte did not reply.

The attic danced in shadow as the candle flames flickered, but Freddy found himself lost on wonder, rather than fear.

Everything in the attic was genuinely antique, not antiqued, or vintage as the 'cool kids' said when he was in high school. This was the real deal, and perfectly preserved. There were no cobwebs, rats, or creepy creatures lying in wait, hidden in shadow to get him.

Well, there was one... but whether friend, or foe, Fereshte was yet to show.

"How do you do that?"

How do I do what?

"With the candles."

With great difficultly.

Freddy nodded. "Does it hurt?"

Not in the way you know or understand pain.

Freddy sighed. He could feel her nearer to him than he was ready.

Somewhere along the way, someone converted the attic into additional room. It was large enough - bigger than his shithole shoebox of a studio apartment - and certainly had the creature comforts to make it livable.

"Why do you do it if it hurts?"

You're afraid of the dark.

Freddy watched two more candles spark into life, red-orange, shadows dancing on old, cracked wallpaper, peeling in some places, sagging away from the wooden walls in others. "You don't even know me, Fereshte."

He sensed a giggle, suppressed. I know enough.

"What is this?"

An attic.

"Yes, but why this?" Freddy moved his arm in a large sweeping arc.

It was my room...

"Must you speak in ellipses? What aren't you telling me?"

No answer this time. More candles flickered to life, an old lantern overhead, hanging from the rafters.

In greater detail, it was beautiful. Old photographs framed in heavy looking wooden frames hung over the wasting paisley wallpaper.
Her parlor, a comfortable looking sitting room of hand carved chairs, and a coffee table with a tea cart across from it, next to a small bookshelf filled with books.

Her dusty attic apartment, unused and dirty as it was, was by far an improvement over his shabby studio.

There were two windows, both caked in dirt. One, Freddy could tell looked outside; one, built into a strange room in the attic, an addition to the original space if he ever saw one.

Freddy saw footprints in the dust, leading from the strange room, footprints that led to him.

"Boo."

Freddy felt her voice in his ear - her actual voice - and what felt like breath. It was warm, even.

He was surprised at how scared he wasn't. "You're real. Really, truly real."

Who else would you be talking to were I not?

"Stress related hallucinations caused by a nervous breakdown due to my self-loathing, because I am a failure."

You're not a failure.

"Like you would know? Maybe I buckled under the weight of my own delusions, imagining I could ever be more than a glorified janitor."

Any honest work is honorable work.

"I'm a well overqualified for what I do, underappreciated, and overworked. I am constantly with a payload beyond my job description."

I appreciate you, Freddy.

"You'd be the first."

Feel better?

"No, I do not." Freddy stepped away from the footprints beside him. Two more appeared across from him.

He felt the faintest sensation of a hand in his cheek, delicate fingers, and petite.

Life is suffering.

"Is this where you try to convince me death is the great escape?"

An overwhelming rush of emotional sorrow washed over him, and her hand slid down his cheek to his neck. He could not see her, but he could feel her, and he could smell the faint perfume of roses.

He felt what must have been her face - her cheek - pressed side-by-side to his. Her breathe was surprisingly hot in his ear, now. "Freddy, I found neither peace, nor escape in death."

"Then why are you here?" He felt the instinct to push her away, but also, he wanted to wrap his arms around her. Freddy lifted his arms up, uncertain what to do, and decided to try and put them around her. There was a brief sensation of static over his body, and her giggle echoed through the attic.

That was so sweet of you.

He could still feel her, cheek-to-cheek with him. He sensed that she was close enough that she might embrace him if she wanted.

You can't touch me.

"Why?"

I'm incorporeal?

"How come I could feel you touching me?"

You want to.

Freddy was thoughtful.
He looked down to see only toe prints in the dust now.

"Are you standing on your toes?"

You're taller than I.

"Fereshte, why are the windows so dirty?"

No one to clean them.

Freddy could feel her hands on either side his neck, sliding past, her arms around him. He could feel her forehead to his forehead.

"What's in that room?"

What room?

"The one that doesn't belong here."

That's where I sleep. Where I slept.

"Are you still in there?"

Silence. The lights in the attic flickered. He felt her arms slide past his neck, and the footprints in the dust backing slowly away.

"Where are you going?"

No answer.

A moment later, through the caked dirt, and grime on the window, he saw a soft glow.
A moment after that he could see her shadow in the dirt of the glass, her silhouette familiar.

"You are that girl in the painting downstairs."

I was, yes.

"I saw you, earlier." Freddy was smiling, though he didn't know it. "When I had my eyes shut."

You did see then. Good.

"Why are you doing this?" Freddy stepped slowly to the window. He could see the silhouette of her hand against the glass. He put his up against it, over it.

I'm lonely.

Freddy slowly withdrew his hand from the glass.

Why do you take back your hand?

"Would any company do?"

No!

Freddy looked uncertain.

If I told you, you would just be afraid.

"Told me what?"

Is it not enough that I am real?

"Wait, what would scare me?"

Please don't ask.

Through the dirty glass he saw her step back, her shadow larger. Suddenly, her finger was to the glass. He heard the tap when it made contact.

Slowly, etching through the dirt, she drew a valentine heart.

Freddy didn't know what to say.

I like you, Freddy. I don't want you to go.

Panic began to form in Freddy's heart, and by the time he turned to face the attic entry, the door was just closing, sealing out the flickering light in the hall below. Just before it shut, he saw the light in the hall go black. "Fereshte!"

You're not a prisoner, I swear it.

"It feels l an awful lot like that! I need to get out of here! I have a home, and a job!"

You have a job you hate, and you haven't even mentioned anyone to go home to.

Freddy fought the urge to frown, and lost. "Friends don't make hostages of friends."

If you go now, you won't come back.

"That is for me to decide!"

You might even get hurt. It's raining, it's cold, and it's dark outside.

"I don't want to go outside, Fereshte, I just don't want to be trapped!"

There is nowhere to go, and you will get lost, or hurt, or worse. I could not stand it if anything happened.

Freddy felt the adrenaline in his legs, his lower back, the bile rising in his throat. "I trusted you. I knew better. I knew better to follow some ghost into the attic and -"

There was a sharp sound, and Freddy's face turned with the force of the blow, the smack echoed off the attic walls, and outside thunder rolled lazy across the blackened skies.

I am not just some ghost!

"Stop it! Right now! You don't know me! Whatever friendship we may have had, you are about to ruin it!"

Soft weeping, muted from behind the dirty glass. Even as the weeping continued: why can't you just believe?

"It's hard to trust someone who's keeping me prisoner." Freddy's tone was grave, though inside the sound of her crying was almost unbearable.

Almost.

If I open the attic, will you stay?

"Would you?"

For you?

"For a stranger."

No.

"Then why would I?"

We're not strangers, are we?

"Terrifying and awkward introductions aside?"

Fine.

"Fine, what?"

The truth.

"A little late for that."

I have waited a long time for you.

"Impossible."

Like ghosts are impossible?

"Like, I'm only in my twenties, impossible."

"I know you." Her hot breath on his ear, again. Even though she appeared the strange room.

At least her crying stopped.

"How can you do that if you're in there?"

I'm not anywhere.

"I can see you in there."

You wouldn't understand.

"You mean how I can't understand why you think you know me?"

Just because you do not understand does not mean it isn't so.

Freddy thought back to the vampire movies, how the monster's victims never understand until they become a monster too. Then they're corrupted by the knowledge of what they become, and self-indulgent, self-superior, and still monsters.

"Oh my God, you're going to try and make me a ghost, too, aren't you?"

Yes, Freddy. I've taken a page from Bram Stoker, and I'm going to ghost-bite you and ghost-bring you into the ghost-legions of the ghostly nether-life.

Freddy blushed, but was still afraid. "Okay, I'm an idiot. Fine."

...and a jerk.

♚ ♚ ♚

"Fereshte, I have to go."

In this storm? Without a car?

Freddy slumped against the outer wall of her room, sliding down the wall to the thick layer of dust on the floor.

Freddy saw an imprint appear next to him.

He looked over where he assumed she was sitting, and made eye contact - what he considered eye contact. "I have to find some asshole who wrote a crappy pseudo-love-existential timeless thing."

Timeless?

"Something like time, and love and..." Freddy shook his head. "It's stupid."

Do you remember any of it?

Freddy nodded, slowly. "Yeah, but it's so stupid."

Recite it to me.

Freddy sighed. He cleared his throat and put on his terrible French accent. "Love, like eternity, is not bound by the constraints of distance, time, or space. Love is, like eternity, unbound."

Is that a Yugoslavian accent?

"French!"

Her disembodied giggle lilted around him, from the floor, the walls, the ceiling ,and rafters.

"...what?"

We had French servants. That is not a French accent.

Freddy's face felt warm. He sighed. He felt her hand on his cheek, still a little put off by the semi solid sensation of being touched by something - someone - that wasn't physically there.

Stay the night with me.

"In there?" Freddy pointed over his shoulder with his thumb.

You wouldn't be comfortable sleeping in an ossuary. Any one of the beds will do.

"You understand how difficult it is to sleep in a haunted house, don't you?"

Don't I ever.

"Where are you, Fereshte?"

Here, next to you. In my room. He heard her tap on the glass. Down stairs.

"You're in three places at once?"

No. I'm nowhere at once. Everywhere at once. I am the walls of this house. I am the windows, the doors, the floor... I am everything.

"How do you touch me?"

Not without difficulty.

"Yes, you said that. How?"

I don't write the rules. I just know what works, and what doesn't.

"How?"

Trial, and error. Someone who wants to make contact, makes contact.

"I didn't want to make contact." Freddy made air quotations.

Clearly you did, Frederick.

"Freddy."

Whatever. She stroked the side of his face. It's mostly you, but some of it is me, too.

Freddy looked confused.

It's like...

Silence followed. There was a definite density to the room, and then the lantern hanging from the rafters detached, and slowly lowered to ground level.

I became my home when I passed on... Except I didn't really pass on. I stayed. I am everything in the house that isn't alive.

"Like me."

Everything living here left.

"What do you mean?"

Well... people came, and went. The way people spoke changed, too. Eventually, people stopped coming. The dead are unsettling.

"I can understand that." Freddy felt her jab him in the shoulder. "What? I can! Until today, I never had a reason to believe."

Silence. He saw the dust shuffle, and then bare foot prints in the thick dust on the attic floor.

She was pacing.

Her voice echoed ominously out of the walls, around him. "...but not just people. Animals. The mice that scampered to, and fro. Birds nesting in the trees. Eventually, everything and everyone just stopped coming."

"How long have you been here?"

I don't know. My existence is timeless. A minute could feel like hours, but even days, and months can pass like seconds.

"So, you're lonely."

I said as much.

"I get it, I really do get it." Freddy said, standing slowly. He brushed himself off, patting a cloud of dust off his backside. He watched her pacing around the attic, and checked the soft glow from the window behind him. Her silhouette seemed to watch her pacing around. Unsettling.

"...but you have to admit that people could get a little nervous, right? You, moving things, drawing attention. Turning lights on, or off."

I was trying to get their attention.

"...because you couldn't touch them."

Yes.

"Why don't you just leave?"

Can a house rise up off its foundation, and simply wander away?

"What if it burned down, or if someone demolishes it?"

She stopped pacing. He watched a smear in the dust as she turned on unseen heels.

I don't know. I don't want to know.

"Well, why are there no other ghosts?"

I don't know. Others have passed here, into wherever you go when you die.

"Do you want to move on?"

Yes. No. I don't think I do. I just want company.

"You've got me for the night, if it helps."

You have no idea.

"So why are you barefoot?" Freddy changed the subject.

Naked.

He blushed again, the warmth in his cheeks spread to his neck, and shoulders. "Naked?"

Clothes have no incorporeal form. They are not living things, they have no living essence, no soul.

...and then: duh.

"Yes, but I thought that ghosts always appeared in to others in the clothes of their time."

With how many ghosts do you cavort?

"No, I get what you're saying, but all the stories."

Yes, we had them in our time, as well. Loved ones manifesting to people in death shrouds, or the clothing what they were buried.

"Yes." Freddy nodded. "Like that."

Those aren't ghosts.

"Of course they are. If you can exist, why not others?"

No, Freddy. I mean they aren't ghosts.

"What are they?"

Something else.

Freddy felt her take his hand. Her grip was comfortable, but firm enough to know she was holding his hand.

Come on, Freddy.

"Where are we going?"

Out of here.

There was an audible click, and a light from below flickered into the same soft orange-yellow light as in the attic. He could see the hall below, again. The ladder lowered slowly, on its own.

Come on, Freddy.

The lights in the attic flickered, and all at once went out except for the soft orange glow inside her ossuary. Freddy glanced back once to see her silhouette watch him leave, and the orange light faded to black.

♚ ♚ ♚

Fereshte chose the room.

The master bedroom, what room she once called her own. There room was free of the dust that blanketed the rest of her home.

The rest of her.

She was the house. Of course the room would be clean.

She ushered him into her bed him with a gentle push of semi-solid hands. There was that same thick tension in the room, as in the attic. Fereshte drew back the heavy crimson duvet to reveal black dyed cotton linen sheets, and she laid him down into the comfort of the mattress. A moment later, there was an imprint in the bed next to him, the shape of her body in an otherwise empty space.

He felt her lay her head on his chest, an arm over him. Freddy closed his eyes, and imagined her there with him, laying on him.

After a moment of thick silence, he felt the sheets, and the duvet lifted up over him, to his chest.

Open your eyes, Freddy.

He did. Despite the comfort, he had to fight a moment of panic rising up in him. He could see clearly the shape of her body beneath the bedcovers, her shoulders, her arm over him. Freddy felt his face growing hot, his neck and shoulders, his chest, his arms, and legs.

There was emptiness where her head would be if he could see her.

"I died up there." Fereshte's voice resonated in his chest. It wasn't the whisper, or hint of girlish mischief he heard earlier, but a baleful, deep sorrow.

"...how - how did you go?"

Alone. Like a child, crying for her mother.

"I mean..." Freddy trailed off.

I know. I was twenty-two years in the world. Poisoned.

"Murdered?"

No.

"Oh." Freddy realized the weight of her words.

I loved.

"Who was he?"

The unsettling sound of her giggle came from all around him. "He was so full of life, Freddy!"

He could feel her breath through his shirt, in his chest. It felt warm - alive.

"He was amazing, Freddy. Amazing."

"What happened?"

Silence.

Freddy?

"...yeah."

Sorry. Wore myself out. Sometimes I miss the sound of my voice.

"I still can't believe this is happening."

You don't believe in me?

Freddy laughed - really laughed - for the first time since he set foot in the strange house. The room was warm, and comfortable. She was warm, and comfortable.

Tell me about your woman?

"There is no woman."

No?

"Not anymore." Freddy shifted, and felt her shift with him. He drew his arm around her form in the covers, and he felt her beneath them. She was not solid, not in any sense of solidity, but she was there. "She was the daughter of an artist."

I love art.

"I think she took it for granted. Her father was a genuine madman, an artist in the truest way. He wasn't some postmodern wanna-be, either. He was the real deal."

Were you with the woman, or her father?

Freddy smirked. "She was an entitled brat, a plain, and very selfish person."

Why would you choose her then?

"I was lonely, I guess. We were engaged."

Were you ever with her?

"For about four years."

No. Did you know her?

"No. She was keeping her chastity until marriage."

She sounds like a good woman, to me. What happened? Were you forceful of your needs, and she not receptive?

Freddy chuckled.

Is that it?

"No, decidedly that is not it."

I do not understand.

"She was indiscriminate with her chastity. Overly charitable with it."

She was not so chaste after all?

"She was glad to share herself, just not with me."

With who?

"A vagrant?"

That giggle, again. In the room, from the walls, in his ears, against his chest. "Fibber, she did not!"

"She did."

Were you not overcome with grief?

"No. She showed her true colors."

She was a colored girl?

"No, no." Freddy was smiling a broad smile. "She revealed her nature."

Oh, I think I take your meaning.

"When did people stop coming?"

Here? I don't know time... but there were carriages... then there were horseless carriages.

"Cars."

Yes, I heard that word. So much changed. The women! Their clothing ! The men... they looked more or less the same, maybe small changes to the clothing.

"Go on."

Oh my God, and the women, Freddy! The dresses changed. They grew shorter, and tighter! Sometimes they showed shins, or knees, or...

Freddy felt her shift. A jolt of anxiety moved through him, and he felt that same newness he knew before his first kiss. The innocent thrill, and fantastic fear that came with anticipation. "Cleavage?" Freddy shouted, his voice an octave just slightly too high.

Not all of them, but their shirts were so tight, so immodest!

Freddy's mind wandered to the empty streets and abandoned cars. The old gas station, and the garage. "Your town made it until around the nineteen-fifties, or so."

As in, 'the year of our Lord nineteen-hundred-fifty'?

"Anno Domini." Freddy's smile was starting to hurt his face, the muscles unused to the gesture. "The same."

Oh my God, Freddy it's been so long.

"Well... it's been a lot longer than that."

What do you mean?

"Well. To put it your way, we're in the Year of our Lord two-thousand-four."

The sensation of shock, and astonishment was surprisingly loud for all the silence that followed. Then:

Have we colonized the moon?

Freddy had to consciously stifle laughter. He didn't want to insult her; it was clear she was going through something he could not understand. "No, I'm afraid not. However, July of nineteen-sixty-nine Neil Armstrong, and Buzz Aldrin were the first two men to set foot on the moon."

...but no colony?

"Where is this moon colony stuff coming from?"

De la terre à la lune?

"Bless you."

It was a French novel one of the maids owned, by an author named Jules Verne.

"From the Earth to the Moon?"

You've heard of it? Her excitement filled the room.

"Uh, yeah. I think everyone has heard of it... and whatsitcalled? Around the Moon."

Autour de la Lune!

"I guess, if that's gibberish-speak for Around the Moon."

The books were first in French.

"Well I had to read both in college, and they're in English now, too."

Amazing. All the things I've missed.

"I don't know if you would have seen much if you lived out your entire life. Electricity. The first automobiles..."

Oh, I know electricity! The Chicago World's Fair was lit up at night by Edison's lightbulbs! 'Who would light the fair would soon light the world'.

"What year was that?"

"Eighteen-ninety-three." Her voice came out around him, on him. "The year after my fiancé was taken from me."

"You were engaged?"

I was.

"What happened?" The shadows of the room danced across Freddy's face, the flickering lamplight, tinting the room in its soft glow.

Silence again.

The room was filled by it, but Freddy could still feel her laying on him, an arm and leg draped over his. He had the impression she was looking him in the face.

He was a journalist, a humanist, and an adventurer. He fell during the Egyptian Expedition the year before the World's Faire. He was with the first shore party, killed by Colonel Ahmed Orabi's forces.

"I've never even heard of that."

I imagine there are a lot of things people want to forget.

"You said he was a journalist?"

...and a humanist. He strongly opposed violence. Sadly, Colonel Orabi's military was indiscriminate.

"I don't much care for war." Freddy found himself wanting to see her, to gauge her expression, to find thought in her eyes.

You have become very quiet.

"I was just thinking."

What about?

"It would be nice to have been friends."

Freddy felt her cuddle up to him, and wondered how much of her reactions were in his head. She said he could only feel her because he wanted to. If she was the house, or became the house, and everything in it, how much was she doing to placate his loneliness - and hers - to touch him?

"When you touch me, can you feel me?"

Can you feel me?

"Yes, but can you feel me?"

I feel this.

Freddy yelped in surprise, the sensation of her hand on his chest and immediately blushed. "Hey!"

"Uh - ah - your room!"

What about it?

"Very cozy."

Mmhm.

"Whoa!" Freddy pulled away, rolling out of the bed, and landing in a heavy thud on the dusty wooden floorboards beside it. He scrambled to his feet to see the bedcovers aloft what looked like a woman's shape, at least up to the shoulders where there was nothing. It looked like she was lying on her side, propped up on an elbow.

Her disembodied giggle filled the room around him.

"Fereshte, we can't do that, you can't do that!"

Clearly I can.

"I don't know you!"

It doesn't look so much like a problem to me, Freddy.

"Fereshte!"

Enough pretending!

The bedclothes flew backward, and instantly what little of her he could see was gone.

♚ ♚ ♚

"Fereshte?" Freddy backed slowly from the bed, adjusting himself so his pants weren't so tight as she pointed out only moments ago. "Fereshte!"

Her girlish giggle came from all around him, from overhead, and below. Freddy felt his back touch the wall. There was nowhere left to go.

Why not?

"Fereshte, where did you go?"

I'm here of course.

Freddy felt her brush past him, from the left, and the right.

She sighed in his ear.

Freddy could not help but think of the Succubus, who drank men's souls away. It sounded like a good deal, except the men always died.

In the stories he read, the Succubus never left survivors.

Freddy could admit he was many things, sometimes neurotic, and a little self-destructive.
Maybe it was even OK to let the monster win in stories, but in life - real life - Freddy was not ready to accept death, and the annihilation of his soul, no matter what.

"Fereshte, you need to stop this. Now." Freddy cleared his throat. "Please."

Just trying to get us reacquainted.

"Reacquainted." Freddy shook his head slowly. "You're being creepy again."

Silence in the room. The tension fled the air.

"Fereshte?"

Freddy heard muffled weeping in the hallway, and his heart sank.

"Fereshte? I know you can hear me. You didn't actually leave the room."

You get the idea, though. Jerk.

"Sorry I called you creepy. You were being creepy."

I'm lonely. You're lonely.

"Not enough reason to just dive right in."

Silence.

"I know you're here. You're everywhere."

...and nowhere. I don't have to talk to you when you're being a jerk, jerk.

"Just lying there was nice."

...humph.

"Huh, you actually said 'humph'. Look, put yourself in my place. Middle of nowhere, a haunted house, a ghost. We're strangers."

I told you.

"Yeah, I know. You've been waiting for me. I told you that's impossible."

Yet here I am, and here you are.

"If I'm upsetting you, I can go sleep in my car."

You don't mean that Freddy Gordon.

Freddy felt her brush past him, stroking his arm down to the wrist, and taking his hand.

Fereshte drew him back to the bed.

Freddy felt her pull him from somewhere on the mattress, pushing him from his chest, at his either side, his shoulders both, guiding him down.

Relax.

"...Fereshte?"

You're in no danger.

Freddy Gordon lay back, feeling the strange weight of her ghost on him, her head beside his, her kiss on the side of his cheek.

"Fereshte..."

Shhh. Just stay here and keep me company then.

♚ ♚ ♚

She does not sleep, Fereshte.

The mortal regard for the peaceful slumber of the dead, restful, and still, was at best a romantic wish.

Yes.

There is an other side. There is an afterlife.
There is existence beyond death; hers is omnipresence existing not within the walls of her home, but as the home itself.

Nothing living set foot in her home.

Not until Freddy.

Fereshte indulged her loneliness, watching Freddy sleep peacefully. She was smiling, at least as much as any formless presence could, and wished against all wishes that he could see her. He would wake, and he would go.

Freddy would leave her again.

He did it each time, every time. He left, he died, and she mourned. Eventually he came back with maybe the faintest familiarity of Fereshte. The faintest longing. Each time, every time, she failed to convince him the truth.

It was her punishment, the cost she paid with her soul the moment she fell into the cold sleep of the poison's embrace. There, up there, in her ossuary, her dry yellowed bones lay in the moldering decay of moth eaten bedclothes.

It was hemlock, of course. She chose to fade away in the abyssal black of death in the poetry of Socrates.

Of course, anyone who has ever died knows that death is neither black, nor was it abyssal. It took the death of Frederick - her Frederick - and one year's time to know there was no healing. There was no coming back from her loss. No mending her broken heart.

In her year's attempt to recover, she became a contemporary. She traveled abroad, Greece, Europe, and Asia. She met other contemporaries of her time, seeking the cure to the pain that plagued her heart. Charles Lafontaine attempted to mesmerize her, though nothing came of it.
Her each failed attempt to find peace brought her closer to a hard reality, that there was no afterlife, no God(s) or Devil(s), and more, that both religion and science were wrong.

There was no mind to speak of, no consciousness, higher, or otherwise.

Not in the way they believed.

In the end, she decided she was as much an accident of the universe as the random creation of planets, and stars.

In the end, nothing mattered, because nothing was. For all his marvels, man knew nothing, did nothing, and achieved nothing but death and violence in death.

She chose the path of Socrates, because of all the things she once loved, and became embittered by, this was the one path she knew would be her salvation from the pain of loss.

She was so wrong. Even as her limbs numbed, and the cold of the hemlock's effects crept into her; even as she faded into death, it was as though her eyes never closed, and would not - could not - ever close again.

She would see everything, all the time. All at once. It took time getting used to that.

Freddy face hinted of in his sleep, and turned to his side.

He was so beautiful. Fereshte lamented what would come when he woke.

In her ossuary, she gazed over her remains, a petite skeleton what once was a woman. The worse years were those where she saw herself waste away, until there was only dust and bones and clothes. Still a bitter reminder of what she once had. Next to her body, cracked and yellowed photos, a double locket with the picture of she, and Frederick. Not the Frederick of now, but as he was when she first knew him.

He was in fact the same man... even if he didn't remember; even if he denied it. He felt something, and this much she was sure.

So, maybe yes she came off the starting line a little aggressively tonight.

She was certain if he was with her - if she were allowed to remind him what it was like to be with her - he would wake up.

She kissed him on the cheek as she had before the fool left for Egypt so long ago, and because he asked her to just lay with him, and talk, she did.

...because that was really what love is. Love was not a prison, nor was it a show of force.

Love was supposed to free you.

She stared at the photos a while longer. The old silver cup, long since tarnished now, still sat in the boney digits of what remained. For the first time since she first became the house, she regretted her decision to die.

Her contemporary views, her agnosticism, her decision that life and death were choices in her control; she saw them as arrogant, now.

How many times did Frederick live, and die, always returning here? Sometimes he was married, sometimes he was not. Sometimes he was an old man, and too many times he found his recognition in her moments before death; those moments where he could see and hear her.

Those last breaths where he called out her name...

...but whatever exception that bound her to the house, they did not apply to him.

Each time she met him again, he did not rightly know her. Sometimes, he did not even sense her.

Now, he was there again. With her. Somewhat open to the idea that he once knew her. The sun would rise, and he with it, and just like that, she would watch helplessly as Frederick left her once again.

Grit, and dirt fell away as by sheer force of will she reached out and cleared a window in the attic. Outside the skies were that cobalt blue that came at dusk, and returned at dawn. The streets below were so busy.

In her early days of unlife, as she liked to call it, she so desperately wanted to get out there, and mix with the people. What Frederick called a ghost town was far more accurate than he understood, though not in the manner what he thought.

Hope Valley was not so abandoned.

Frederick had no idea. Better that he not know.

Better he should be safe.

In their room, his eyes were opened to slits. "Fereshte?"

I'm here.

"What time is it?"

Let me check my watch.

Freddy blinked.

Nope. My watch is dead.

"Funny."

I try. The sun will be up pretty soon. There seems to be a break in the storm.

"I was thinking. How the hell am I going to get out of this mess?"

Mess?

"Being stranded." Freddy pulled himself up, sitting back against the headboard as Fereshte's shape began to fill beneath the covers again.

The issue never occurred to me.

"...because I belong with you?"

You absolutely belong to me... but no. Decidedly not. It just never occurred to me your dilemma. I was just glad to have you back a short while.

Freddy felt a surprising alarm. "Wait, you're not going to keep me here?"

If you only knew how many times I've tried, and failed...

"I could visit you."

You tell such beautiful lies.

"Stop saying goodbye. I don't even know how I'm going to get out of Hope Valley."

I don't have food for you here. I'm sure there is nothing in the market, or the general store.

"Do you really believe you know me?"

Yes.

Freddy sighed, pulling the covers up to his chest. He put his arm around the shape of her in the duvet. "My whole life, all I ever wanted was a love story... and to be a writer. Probably a writer, more. Love has failed me so many times I stopped counting."

I cannot pretend to have the answer to that. It is so romantic, Freddy. I want to tell you fate destined you to be here. Now.

"Well if I'm the same person you say I am, isn't that destiny?"

I realized tonight that you're not the same person I say.

"I'm not?"

If you don't remember, then regardless of who I know you are, to you, you're not that person.

"Could you prove it?"

I love you too much to prove it. Four hours ago? Yes. Now? Why would I put you in a position that neither of us could reconcile?

"...maybe I want to know."

If you wanted to know, I think you would know.

"I saw that painting of you, and you cannot imagine what I felt when I saw you. Longing I couldn't understand. Sorrow I couldn't understand. Maybe that is me remembering."

Maybe is not enough or me to risk your happiness for the sake of mine.

Freddy's heart sank. "Fereshte, I wish I knew what you wish I knew."

Do you want to watch the sun rise?

♚ ♚ ♚

Fereshte watched Freddy drift back into sleep as the sun crept slowly over the horizon, a sinister morning star, a bully, drowning out the night sky, and all its stars in the garish, sharp glare of morning.

Still, Freddy slept.

Freddy.

"Mmmf." Freddy squeezed his eyes shut, knitting his brow into a furrow. "Fereshte, close the curtains, please."

It's time to wake up, Freddy.

Fereshte nudged him, and Freddy rolled over into his side, pulling the duvet close to his face.

Freddy.

Fereshte put what would have been her hands on him, and shook him gently.

"C'mon, Fereshte." Freddy's voice trailed off on a nasal whine that would have melted her heart, had she a heart to melt. He was so endearing.

You have work to do, Freddy Gordon. Wake up, or I will wake you up.

Freddy kicked a leg out, and jerked sharply into his back, flopping out an arm. "Come to bed, Fereshte. Sleep!"

I can't sleep. Neither can you.

"Fine." Freddy's eyes opened, slowly, squinting against the light of the room. "...please close the curtains."

The room filled with a moment of tension that rumbled in Freddy's ears and the curtains closed.

It is time to wake up, and go.

"...just wait a second. Let me clear the cobwebs out of my head."

You have no time for that.

"I want to see what's in the room."

No.

"I need to see what's in the room."

No.

"Fereshte, what's your problem?"

I can't do this, Freddy.

The room was suddenly clear of tension as sunlight split the clouds in the sky, a single sharp beam shining through the slit between the drawn curtains, cutting through the dust motes in the room, and into Freddy's eyes.

"Fereshte?" He sat up, pushing the duvet off to the side. In a single motion, he swung himself upright, legs comfortably over the side of the bed, and stood from his seat on the mattress.

She was absent in the room; the strange presence that hovered like cabin pressure and tension, gone.

"Fereshte..." Freddy sulked, but beyond sulking, he felt something hurting, something breaking. Over what a day ago was someone he considered a stranger. Over someone a week ago could not - would not - believe existed.

Freddy felt the weight of regret, the suffocating prison that is helplessness, and the crushing pain of sorrow. What could he do? What could he have done, or said differently?

His expression hardened from sadness, to frustration.

Why lure him into feeling anything at all, only to abandon him?

His expression darkened into frustration. Why bother? Why take the time to bond, to love, to feel - and be felt - if she was going to abandon him?

Frustration became anger,.

Too many times Freddy felt this sting. Finally when love was there, staring him in the face, love - true love - fled. "What is wrong with me?"

Red faced, and a little dizzy, Freddy stormed for the bedroom door. There was nothing of resistance when he took the crystal doorknob into his hand, no difficulty opening the door itself.

"You!" Freddy stepped into the hallway, staring down its dim corridor, the dust swirling in patterns near matching the paisley wallpaper. He was getting tired of the paisley. "You tricked me!"

Nothing. No tension. No presence. No sobbing. Freddy pushed his palm to his forehead to steady himself as the dizziness became momentarily more intense. He shook his head sharply, dropping his hand back to his side.

"I know you're out there, I know you can hear me! You refused to let me leave! You demanded my company! You used me!"

Nothing.

Freddy stalked his way to the attic. The draw-cord hung limp from the door.

He felt a moment of hesitation, ignoring now the overwhelming dizziness, the black spots mottling his vision like fat drops of black pitch spattering into his field of vision.

Freddy reached high for the cord, and felt a sharp pain in his back, between his shoulder blades. His breathe caught in his ribs to the sensation of a crunch.

Freddy's last thought before the black void took him was how much that crunch felt in his chest the way shattering glass sounded in his ears.

Beautiful and painful.

♚ ♚ ♚

The spray of spit and bile as Freddy coughed was magnificent against the interior of his windshield with the morning sunlight beaming through, projecting a prismatic rainbow across his cheek, on Freddy could see in his rear view mirror.

Eyes wide, with a white knuckled grip on the steering wheel, Freddy pushed himself into his seat with all the strength he could, and it was all he could do to keep from flailing frantically in his seat, flopping fruitlessly like a trout, drowning on air; the panic sank into the pit of his stomach, and Freddy attempted to employ deep breathing, like in theater, before a show (Goddamnit, Kenickie).

"...Fereshte?"

No answer. Nothing at all.

The where-am-I fugue passed quickly, and slowly he recognized the gutted interior, the seat cover over otherwise crumbling cushion and bare springs; Freddy was sitting in the cockpit of his very own Sentra POS.

The keys dangled from the ignition.

He slowly shook his head. "No, no, no!" He coughed, sending a less than spectacular spray of drool over the steering wheel. He did not care. "That was real - it was real - she was real!"

He turned the keys. The car started. He recognized immediately, he was facing away from Hope Valley.

"No." Freddy shook his head, feeling warmth rising up in his cheeks. "No, Goddamnit!"

He put the car into drive, and began a U-Turn; the car sputtered, and lurched, but it kept running.

Of light and prisms, the skies were a canvas of the color spectrum, blinding silver linings outlining dark clouds, broken, and burning away under the power of an unrelenting morning sun.

The miracle of the morning sun was lost on Freddy, who at that moment truly believed it was will alone pushing his car along the road back to Hope Valley.

♚ ♚ ♚

Freddy whooped, hollering down the highway 927, achieving terminal velocity in his '96 Sentra (which was maybe fifty-three miles an hour).

With the windows down, and radio static blasting a snowy hiss over the speakers, Freddy ignored the potholes, cracks in the road, asphalt fissures, and debris.

As his car made known through his seat, every bump, every pebble in the road, Freddy - whose white knuckle grip on the steering wheel became a painful shade of alabaster - leaned into the wheel, pivoting around dips, and crevices on the highway.

Freddy car screeched as a sudden lurch bottomed his sentry out over a full portion of missing road, spraying a brilliant fountain of red-white hot metal sparks behind him, and immediately followed with his stomach dropping as his car caught air, and landed hard back onto the highway.

After a moment of stunned silence, Freddy bellowed his best woo-hoo, and had to fight the temptation to turn around and do it again.

He passed the Hope Valley sign, (population: 78), and slowed to a considerable crawl.

Freddy coasted slowly past the old gas station, the broken phone booth, and along the cracked and crumbled Main Street.

The static in the speakers cut, suddenly switching over to his CD player.

"...Love, like eternity, is not bound by the constraints of distance, time, or space. Love is, like eternity, unbound."

The CD skipped.

"...Love, like eternity, is not bound by the constraints of distance, time, or..."

The track continued to repeat itself.

For a moment - for only the smallest moment - Freddy thought he could feel her familiar tension, that pressure that belonged to Fereshte, but before he was certain, it was gone already.

Unfinished business.

Was that not the universal theme that kept ghosts tied to the mortal plane of existence?

Did Fereshte have unfinished business?

"...Love, like eternity..." The CD skipped. Freddy felt a familiar taste in his throat, a different fear, than ghosts and monsters, vampires, werewolves, zombies or succubi.

He imagined the weight of Grady's disapproving glower upon him. Those consequences worse than mopping floors rose up inside his throat, and Freddy felt the familiar sting of bile behind it.

No! Freddy shook his head, subduing the nausea, the fear of Grady's consequences; the fear of fear itself.

Freddy slowed to a stop, idling his car just outside Fereshte's manor. In broad daylight, the Victorian-gothic revival manor looked frail - almost ramshackle - and aged.

It looked dead.

"Fuck." Freddy stared straight ahead. Of course he wanted to go inside and confront Fereshte on his terms; of course he wanted to kick in the door and force his way into the attic, to disturb her ossuary where Fereshte - the real Fereshte lay - and demand her attention.

Of course he wanted to... but he had a job to do. He had unfinished business, himself.

For the first time, Freddy felt like he wanted to break down and cry. He didn't feel that way when he kicked his cheating ex to the curb, or during any breakup, or loss before...

...but this was not just some breakup. It was not merely loss. This felt like rejection, and rejection hurt.

He knew he was not going to kick in a door when he had work to do, and somehow she knew it, too. She knew that something about him, that inexorable need to fulfill his duty. He knew that she knew he would choose to complete his task.

Freddy was grateful, and he would have smiled - truly smiled - were he not feeling so upset.

Unbuckling his safety belt, he put his car into park, and reached across the remains of his center console, leaning in deep to dig under his seat. He found the envelope with this French guy's name, and address.

Freddy buckled back in, pulling forward into Fereshte's driveway, reversing out, and driving away from Fereshte's house.

♚ ♚ ♚

The drive took less than twenty minutes, but Freddy knew immediately something was off.

"A fucking graveyard?" Freddy sneered through his spit and vomit stained windshield.

His first thought was J. Carroll Grady tricked him intentionally. That thought wiped itself away immediately. Freddy was in the clock, working on Grady's dime, and the mean old bastard wasn't about wasting time, or money.
His second thought was F. Jacques whatever-his-name was some sort of nineties avante gardé Goth holdover; the eccentric artist living in the graveyard.

The final nail in the proverbial coffin, Freddy smiled, is there's nowhere to live in this cemetery.

The address led to a mausoleum.

Freddy sighed. "I saw this movie, too. The dumb guy died."

He unbuckled, and pulled the envelope off his passenger seat. Opening the driver side door, Freddy put boots to the cemetery dirt.

The stroll to the mausoleum was surprisingly peaceful. The graveyard was in as much a state as the rest of Hope Valley (population: 78), with crab grass in its different shades of dead, and yellowed.

With some effort, Freddy managed to push the double doors to the mausoleum in, the metallic creak chilling him, the sound straight out of his scariest movies.

Inside, as he expected, it was a mausoleum.

The bright, now pre-afternoon daylight cast color throughout the grave vault through stained glass windows. Freddy entered cautiously, stopping suddenly, stiffly in his tracks. Dead center, a polished brass plate, and inscribed into it, the name F. Jacques Colline.

♚ ♚ ♚

Freddy tossed the envelope onto Grady's desk unceremoniously.

"Yab'etter 'ave a fucking good'ol dandy o'a'reason to marchin'ere wit'hat kinda audacity, Felix!" J. Carroll Grady's spat half the contents of his mouth onto his desk, wide eyed, and red faced.

Freddy took a seat on the corner of Grady's desk, dipping his finger Ito the half chewed food. He smelled it, made a face, and wiped his finger on his jeans. "It's Freddy. Did you know F. Jacques Colline was dead?"

"Dae'd you say?" Grady swallowed his food in a hurry.

"I said dead. Dead as a fucking doornail, and by only a half century."

Grady was silent, stern faced, and shocked.

Freddy waited.

"...'course I knew'e'were dead you daft idiot asshole."

Freddy didn't flinch. "I quit."

He slid off Grady's desk, and continued his saunter to the door, only stopping to look halfway over his shoulder. "You'd think a man like you could afford authentic Indian. Of course you can, but you're too fucking cheap."

Grady stuttered, dumbstruck.

"What? Couldn't send the kid? Had to do something yourself? You're right, Grady. There's worse things than mopping the floors. Now you can figure out what to do with them."

"Ya'walk outta'ere, boy, you'll never'ork innis'industry again!"

Freddy continued out without another word, shutting the door quietly behind him.

♚ ♚ ♚

Freddy scowled, staring at his locker. His nameplate engraved as Ferddy Gorgon, echoed memories through his head.

We'll get that fixed up next week.

One week became one month, and then a year. Then years.

It wasn't until Freddy noticed that J. Carroll Grady, and his goons kept calling him by the wrong name - sometimes (most times) not even close - that Freddy realized he was, an always would be "Ferddy Gorgon" to J. Carroll Grady publishing. Or Fennel Gordus... or Fergus Gramble. The list went on.

Freddy offered to buy his own nameplate on two separate occasions, Grady's office shot it down, suggesting the correctly spelled nameplate was on back order.

A number of times, Freddy considered reporting the Media Group, but for what? What story of harassment, or unfair work practices could ever stick?

No. Freddy always thought hard work without complaint was the path to advancement.

All he wanted to do - to ever do - was become an investigative journalist.

Now, he was blacklisted.
Now, not only was he a nobody, he would always be a nobody.

He opened his locker to find his cell phone, still charged at eighty-percent, with two-hundred-fifty missed calls, two from Grady, and two-hundred-forty-eight from Grady's Secretary.

The cell phone began vibrating, a rattle dance on the metal shelf of his locker. Freddy picked up the cell phone, and stared at the caller ID, which was no great help; it was a blocked number.

Freddy, nothing to lose, answered. "Freddy Gordon, unemployed."

"Weren't done with'ya, ya'little shit!" Grady's gruff voice was tinny over the phone. Freddy could hear him down the hall in his office, the phone a one second, or so delay.

"...and then I quit."

"Reckon'it yer'emptyin'out."

"No one talks like that, Grady. I've quit, what do you want?"

"...t'ffer ya'a'job, ya'cocky sonovabitch."

"I'm not interested."

"Thinkey' maybe."

Freddy considered hanging up, but waited, instead. "Go ahead."

"Tookey'e some massive balls'ta'talk to me how you did. Never put much stock inna sycophantic swill'of a boy, but ya'brand o'passion belongs with the Grady Media Group."

"Did you know Hope Valley's a ghost town?"

"No."

"Everything there is dead, not just F. Jacques what-the-fuck-ever his name. Hope Valley, Population Seventy-Eight, hasn't been population seventy-eight since the fifties."

"'An'yer not wond'rin why that is?"

"Do you know?"

"Fuckif'I'oughtta." Grady's voice had an amusement in its tone, not mockery, but more a wonder Freddy was so far unfamiliar.

"What do you want?"

"Clear'out yer locker, boy. Yer'll need'ta report to the editorial department."

"I'm no mopping floors for you, anymore. Now now, not ever again."

"Boy'er either the slowest motherfucker I'yever met, or the dumbest. I need a journalist, now'er'ey want the job?"

Freddy nodded.

"Good."

Freddy jumped, a little, and spun on his heel to find J. Carroll Grady standing behind him in the doorway. "Shit, you startled me."

"Balls'nt goina win'ya everything, boy. Don't make an'ass outta me for this." Grady tossed a small box to Freddy.

Freddy caught it, and nodded slowly, packing his locker into a box

"Good'en it's good'an settled."

♚ ♚ ♚

You can never go home again.

Excluding Thomas Wolfe's 1929 work (posthumously published in 1940), Freddy Gordon heard too many times you can never go home again...

...and While Thomas Wolfe's work is dramatic, and compelling, it is less about what cannot be recovered in the heart.

Freddy viewed himself less of a George Webber, and more of a Philip Pirrip. Great Expectations was something he could really understand, something he could sink his teeth into.

The cinematic modern take was not too bad, either.

Freddy, like Philip Pirrip (Pip) wanted to belong, and matters of station were less important than matters of love, except if, and only, they should better see his success in love.

So far, he had until recently, nothing of station, and his only real shot at love was doomed from the moment he opened his heart to her, to Fereshte.

In life, there was no undo.

To that degree, at least, he felt he was right.

Even as his excitement mounted, he found no reward when he took the off-ramp to highway 927. Driving in a climate controlled company car, Freddy felt none of the bumps, dips, potholes, or pebbles in the road. It was just another highway on the way to an assignment.

While he dare not accelerate to reckless speeds, Freddy risked a little wilderness behind the wheel, weaving I to the oncoming lane, then back.

Nothing.

He realized, about halfway down highway 927 his excitement the first time around was centered on an assignment with horrible consequences, or what he perceived at that time as horrible consequences.

Now, there was no risk, and his was a reward that really did steal from the joy of what should be exciting... but, he already traversed this road, and the conditions were more exciting.
A piece of shit car, a brewing storm, and a ghost town.
The perfect recipe for a personal horror story, and Freddy found, try as he might, he could not summon even the smallest amount of feeling.

Not for this part of the journey, at least.

The company car was comfortable, though. The radio worked, it had a multi-disc CD player, and warmed seats. The car was luxury, a benefit, and privilege afforded to Grady's higher tier employees.

No, this was not some amazing coming of age road trip. That ship sailed last time, and he was so busy complaining about the rain, and weather, he missed the opportunity to grow in his own story.

Was this how Grady felt all the time? Was this why the crotchety old bastard was always so damned mean?

Freddy hoped not.

What a terrible turn of irony, if his successful advancement in career meant a fundamental failure to, and of himself.

Freddy shivered.

That was at least something.

Hope Valley appeared on the horizon. It looked nothing to him as first it did, under the blanket of storm clouds at dusk. The threat of darkness, gone; Freddy slowed the car.

I can't have it back, he frowned, his brow knitting a furrow. I wish I never left.

Freddy turned on the radio, expecting at least one station, among the many preprogrammed by whomever last drove, to function, but his only reward was static.

At least some things don't change. Freddy smiled. Maybe his poor luck finding music, or talk radio, or radio in Swahili - any radio - was a sign that his fortunes were about to change for the worse.

Hopefully, right?

Somewhere, not too deep within Freddy's mind, he realized how strange it would seem to anyone, wishing for misfortune as an omen of good fortune.

He laughed out loud, and was startled by the sound of his own voice as he passed the threshold into town.

Hope Valley was a dead town, and so be it.

Freddy Gordon would be the Vulture to pick at its bones.

♚ ♚ ♚

The common cliché reads, or speaks, if these walls could talk, but Freddy Gordon knew better than that.

There were questions, and these were the sort of questions only Fereshte could answer.

He pulled the company car alongside the curb outside the manor, and pretended not to notice the clear spot in the attic window where once there was caked dirt, and filth; he ignored the parted curtains.

Finally, he felt the thrill he hoped he would.

Finally, Freddy smiled, opening the car door, and setting feet on the cracked concrete sidewalk. I'm home.

♚ ♚ ♚

The entry door was shut.

"Fereshte?"

No answer. Freddy, feeling only a little silly, knocked.

No answer.

He turned the door knob, only to find the door locked. It was more than locked, though. It was as though the door itself fused to the frame, and the jambs.

This was no accident.

There was a sharp buildup of tension, and Freddy's face turned slightly with the force of her slap.

Go away.

"You can come outside?"

She did not answer, but Freddy felt the next slap coming, and stepped three feet back from the door. "Clever."

Go away, Frederick.

"It's Freddy."

Whatever.

"Why the hostility?" Freddy paced back, and forth a safe distance from the door.

Fereshte did not answer. Instead, for the first time since meeting her, Freddy saw her.
Fereshte did not materialize like some warp transporter, or teleporter, and it was nothing like what you see in movies, or dramatizations on those ghost investigation shows.

There, the porch was empty, and then it was not, with Fereshte sitting on the porch step. Her eyes, or the manifestation of her eyes, were glassy like she was crying.

Except, she was not crying, at least not right now. It looked more like glaring.

What do you want, Frederick?
Her mouth did not move when she spoke, though her body language shifted with her inflections.

"It's Freddy." He stopped pacing, and knelt. "I have a lot of questions."

That's too bad.

"Is it?" He stared her in the eyes. "How did you get me out of your house?"

The specter of Fereshte smirked.

"All this animosity, why?"

You don't understand, do you? It hurts to talk to you, to think of you. It hurts to know I cannot have you. Will never have you.

"I found F. Jacques Colline."

That wasn't your real name.

"What?"

It wasn't your real name, Frederick. There is no F. Jacques Colline, it was a pseudonym.

"Why?"

...because you knew you would not believe what you saw otherwise. You were worried it would frighten you, or somehow cause you irreparable harm.

"What are you talking about, Fereshte?"

Without transition from sitting, to standing, Fereshte was on her feet, eyes wide in anger. "You are F. Jacques Colline! Colline means in French what Gordon means in English. The F was for Frederick, you dolt."

Her mouth moved with the words, though out of sync.

Freddy felt cold in the pit of his stomach. "How could I be him?"

Frederick, why do you keep coming back?

"I can't stay away from you," Freddy said it before he could stop himself. "I don't know why, but I feel like I belong. I feel like I know you, or should know you."

That's what you said last time. You were the last man to live in my home. You changed nothing of my decoration. You kept the wallpaper, the paintings - oh Frederick - you would sit at the hearth and stare at my painting.

"...I do not believe in reincarnation."

Neither do I... but you don't come back as someone else. You just keep coming back. As you. I watched you grow old, Freddy Gordon. You were lonely, and sad, and you refused to choose anyone. There were whole days I begged at your ear to take a companion, but you couldn't hear me. You didn't know I was there until you wanted to.

"...why is this happening to us?"

I don't know. Maybe a curse? Maybe because I took my own life? I don't know, but I'm suffering Frederick. I cannot have you, and I cannot not have you.

"What happened to F. Jacques Colline?"

What happened to you? You got old, and finally you found me. I told you all the things I tell you every time we meet, and this time you believed me. You wrote that piece on love, and time. You said it would help me find you again.

"I set me up to find you?"

You never remember. Not since the first time you found me after Egypt.

"Let's pretend this is all true."

It is.

"Okay, but let's pretend it really is true."

Freddy, it really is true.

"Okay, but for the sake of argument -"

No argument. I have to wait lifetime, after lifetime to see you, each and every time. Since the day you died in Egypt.

Freddy sighed. "Fine. How did F. Jacques - my - work end up in an audio format?"

You gave it to someone named Grady.

Freddy's eyes widened, and he glanced at the car behind him.

What is it, Frederick?

"I never told you about Grady."

Of course you did. It was part of your plan to help you find me again. To make finding me a little easier.

"No, Fereshte, I don't mean then me, or whatever. I mean me, Fereshte. The now me."

What do you have to do with Grady?

"He's my boss."

Impossible.

"You mean like ghosts, haunted houses that haunt their ghost, and me-incarnation?"

She was sitting again, her back to the door, one leg outstretched. She said nothing.

"J. Carroll Grady owns a media outlet. Publishing, tabloids, public access programs funded by grants from who-the-hell-ever, and radio stations."

It isn't the same man.

"Like I'm not the same man?"

No, you are the same man. Over, and over again. The Grady you knew when you wrote the piece was Lawrence Phillip Grady.

"My head hurts."

It's a lot to take in.

"No, dear. You slapped the shit out of me."

I'm going to assume that's an idiom. Would you like to come inside?

♚ ♚ ♚

I'm sorry.

"You're temperamental." Freddy sat in the antique couch at the hearth. He stared at her painting.

That's true, but it is no excuse.

"You know I accept your apology."

The giggle, her giggle, in stereo. Freddy felt himself smile.

It will be a while before I can appear again. It hurts when I do that.

"Why do you?"

I wanted you to see me. To really see me.

"I thought you didn't want me to see you?"

How do you know so little about women?

Freddy saw her imprint appear on the cushion next to him. "Are you actually sitting there?"

Yes, and no. I am the house, and everything in it. So in short, yes. I'm sitting next to you. In full? No. I have no weight to speak of, so I simulate it.

"Why? I'm comfortable just being around you. Or I guess, you being around me."

I like to feel like I'm here, and now. Being everywhere and nowhere at once is frustrating.

Freddy nodded.

I was scared you wouldn't come back.

"I missed you. I really had no idea whatsoever what I was going to do."

Um... I kind of possessed you.

"Come again?"

To get you to your car. I never attempted it before. It was painful beyond description.

"Why do you keep doing things that hurt?

I used to believe those things hurt less than your absence. The truth is, I'm glad you're here again. Sorry for the whole possession thing.

"Let's avoid that, if we can."

I couldn't hold together around the time I got to your automobile.

"You made it a mile?"

Was it that? We crawled most of the way.

"What? Why?"

I had trouble balancing. Walking. You've got a strange center of gravity.

"Thanks?"

Her disembodied laughter echoed around him, and faded back into the silence.

Frederick, I'm scared.

"What scares you?"

It's different this time. Sometimes you stay. Sometimes you leave. You've never come back before. Why are you here?

"I had to be with you."

What about your duties?

"Oh, that? I'm slapping together an investigative piece on Hope Valley. It's tabloid, but I'll give it credibility. It was an excuse to get back here, to you."

You finally have what you want, Freddy.

"No, no I don't." Freddy put his arm around her, or at least around the back of the couch. "What I want is you."

Freddy, there is no me. I'm bone and dust, and dead. I'm not here.

Freddy moved, closing distance between his half of the couch and the indentation in the cushion. He leaned over with a pucker, and kissed air where he assumed would be her cheek.

You're very sweet.

"We're going to find out why we're caught in this cycle, and how to end it. Then we can be free."

♚ ♚ ♚

Freddy stood outside the window to her strange room, what she called her ossuary, staring at her silhouette through the dirty glass as lantern flame danced behind her.

"You need to let me in there."

You don't want to come in here Frederick.

Freddy didn't correct her on his name. "I need to. I can't help you if you don't let me in. Trust me."

Freddy heard her sigh from a dozen different directions. There was a dull click, and sliding metal on wood, the sound of a lock, and a latch,
Freddy slowly made his way to a panel on the side of her room - her ossuary - a panel he would not have seen if not for it being slightly ajar. He felt her next to him, saw her footprints near to his in the dust.

Frederick...

"It's for the both of us." He stifled a bitter expression as stale air wafted out of the bone room.

Are you alright?

Freddy nodded. "Could you give me some light, please?"

Freddy had the sense she was nodding, but in his mind's eye she looked troubled. "It's alright. I just need to see what I'm looking at."

Ending in prepositions, Freddy Gordon? Her voice echoed in his heart.

Freddy smiled, but felt apprehensive as he and Fereshte passed the threshold of the no-longer-hidden-door. The lantern in her ossuary glowed soft yellow-orange.

Freddy stared at the skeletal remains laying in the bed. She did not look comfortable. "You're wearing the dress."

I was feeling very gothic.

"Like Marilyn Manson?"

Who is that?

Freddy's mouth twitched. He smiled, despite himself, feeling macabre. "You're beautiful, Fereshte."

I'm nothing.

"No... You're everything." He saw the tarnished silver cup in her hand, the yellowed photos next to her bones.

Frederick, don't.

Freddy reached down and carefully took the aged photos into his hands. In all the various pictures, there was a single constant. He was staring into each photo, his face staring back at him. "How is this possible, Fereshte?"

You've always been here.

"Okay, Overlook Hotel." Freddy's voice cracked. The overwhelming Déjà Vu crept through him in rolling waves, a tidal force of constant familiarity.

Over what?

"It's from a story by Stephen King."

America has a King?

"Well if you count Stephen, and Rodney, I'd say there's a few." Freddy placed the photos next to the boney digits of Fereshte's skeletal hand.

I don't understand.

"...the only Kings we have in our country are names."

Not titles?

"We're still the land of the free'ish."

What is freeish?

Freddy dared a moment of bravery, adjusting Feteshte's skull. "Fereshte, did you fall?"

No.

"Did you hit your head?"

No. I drank hemlock tea, and died a philosopher's death.

"I don't think you did." Freddy ran his finger along a deep fracture on her skull.

Pieces of skull caved inward like thick eggshell.

I didn't take injury. I would have known.

Freddy gingerly reached for her boney digits and plucked the silver cup delicately from the loose boney grip. He ran his finger along the inside of the cup.

What are you doing?

"Fucking up a crime scene, I think."

Crime scene?

"I'm not remotely educated enough to wing a theory... but I don't think you went the way you think you did."

No. I remember. I drank my death tea, and became cold, and numb, and I eventually lost consciousness. The next thing I know, I'm looking at my body. I was pretty.

"I can't argue there, but come'ere. Look."

I am here.

"Okay, right. Look. See what I'm seeing. You have an enormous fissure in the side of your skull. Fereshte, you were murdered.

Then why am I still here?

"I don't know... but you can scratch damned off the list. Listen, I know some people who may be able to help us. To help you."

Who?

"So, I knew this group when I was in college. Researchers, the paranormal type."

Mediums?

"No, they're more like pseudo-science geeks."

Geeks? Carnival folk?

Freddy laughed. "They study Hauntings."

How do you study hauntings?

"They research, document, and develop solutions. They solve Hauntings."

How do you solve haunting? The idea that I could be solved is frightening to me.

"Well, they know their field. All of them brilliant madmen. Well a couple mad women." Freddie said, stroking the side of Fereshte's skull tenderly. He could feel her smiling in the air around him. "One went into the Air Force after college. Did some work he doesn't really talk about. He was retired after some accident. One's a physics professor now, not particularly popular. Considered an eccentric."

Eccentric, how?

"Eccentric because she's wealthy... otherwise she'd just be crazy."

The others?

"One was studying forensics, there was a psyche major..."

Like phrenology?

"Well, like that, except an exacting science of medicine, and not like phrenology at all."

Why?

"You understand phrenology was debunked, right?"

Why?

"...because it's not real. You can't make judgments on intelligence or behavior based on bumps or large parts of the head."

Damn it. I'm out of the loop for a minute, and the world goes crazy.

"...can't argue with you there. One of them's a media major graduate, specifically in film."

A photographer?

"Communications. Shoddy luck, him." Freddy smirked. "I ended up in a relationship with one of them."

One of the men?

"No." Freddy's burst of laughter startled him. "She was in communications, too. Turns out ah had a thing for vagrants."

Her! She was a collegiate?

"Proves book smarts doesn't account for wisdom, right? Fereshte, if I could get just a few of them over here, maybe we could get some answers."

I don't know. I don't like the idea of being solved, Frederick.

"It may be our best shot. I believe you, completely, especially now." Freddy said, eying the photographs. "We get them here, and maybe we can find out why you've been stuck here."

I'm with you now. I'm happy.

"What happens when I get old, and die. Do you want to go through this again, and again? The world will continue to change, and I may not believe the next time around. It could be lifetimes before you have this opportunity again."

Fine.

"Don't be so upset. I won't let anyone hurt you. I have a phone, I'll make some calls. We could have this figured out, better sooner than later... or not at all."

If this doesn't work?

"We'll have tried something new."

Okay.

Freddy felt her hand on his shoulder, the semi corporeal weight of being touched by her ghost. He reached down, and held one of the skeleton's hands. "This cannot be the closest I am to holding you. Not in this life, or any."

♚ ♚ ♚

"Freddy Gordon!" Randall Gibbons' smile stretched ear-to-ear on his wide mustached face as he slowly rolled up the walkway to the door on his Hoveround.
The morbidly heavy man was a victim of a military faux pas, which should have killed him - did kill him - except it did not.

Or it did, but he survived.

If asked, Randall could go on for hours about the misfortune of surviving death, and wax philosophical on his strange recipes for spirituality.

Everything in Randall failed, every day, yet his body would not quit.

Large oxygen tubes, fitted to the back of his Hoveround, fed him his oxygen on the days he had COPD (his various conditions were inconstant at best), or when his asthma was unbearable. Some days he walked with an ironwood cane, and some days he had MS, and could not walk - or move - at all.

Randall confided once, and never mentioned it again, that death was at his door every moment of every day. When Freddy asked what kept him going, Randall Gibbons said only one word: Harmony.

Following in a slow precession behind Randall Gibbons, Martin "Marty" Bitterman, and Ursa Medvedeva, the Communications Majors. Marty grinned a lopsided grin, and waved. "Oi, Freddy!"

Freddy smiled back, surprised how happy he was to see his old college pals, even Ursa the Bumhumper. "How's tricks, Bitterman?"

"Dirigit Deus!" Marty struggled with his equipment a moment, careful not to drop his cameras. Ursa said nothing, and looked embarrassed to be there.

"...and if not, you will!" Olivia Green called after Marty, stepping down, out of the side of Randall Gibbons' van.

Olivia, Marty, and Freddy laughed.

"Dirigit Deus" meant God will direct it!" and was the motto of the Bitterman family Coat of Arms dating back to Ye Old Scotland. The joke of course was 'God will direct it... and if not you will!'

"Help us unload?" Olivia snuck a furtive smile at Freddy.

Freddy felt a light nudge between his shoulder blades.

"I don't think she liked that." Randall called over his shoulder as he slowed to a stop at the doorstep. End of the road for the Hoveround.

Olivia looked around her, drawing her shoulders up. "Who?"

"Who do ya think?" The double doors to the back of Randall's van swung open slowly, and Jack Spade stepped out carrying an armful of blueprints, and an armful of luggage. "She's standing on the porch making moon eyes at Freddy, and glaring at you."

Freddy scratched at the back of his neck nervously, and rushed to help Jack with his luggage.

"Thanks."

"What the hell'd you guys pack?" Freddy hefted the luggage, one over each shoulder.

"A little bit of everything on short notice." Jack steadied Freddy. "A little bit of just-in-case, and a little bit of just-because."

"Oh, okay." Freddy laughed, stepping carefully up the path to the front door. He could feel Fereshte's hands on his shoulders, keeping him semi-steady with her semi-corporeal touch.

♚ ♚ ♚

Freddy, Olivia, Jack and Marty organized the luggage, and gear alongside the entryway. Freddy, Jack, and Marty had to make extra trips to the van to retrieve three generators and four gas cans.

They stored those outside.

"Fereshte," Freddy stood across from the five, an arm out presenting his old crew of friends. "This is Randall Gibbons, the cat's nine lives, and the resident psychic detective."

Let him know it is good to meet him.

"It is very good to meet you, too, my lady." Randall half bowed, his weight kept in check by the strength of his cane.

You can hear me?

"I can see you, too." Randall smiled, and gestured by sweeping his arm across the empty space of the room, to the walls, and the house. "Everywhere."

Fereshte giggled, her disembodied voice echoing out of the walls, catching the rest of the group off guard.
She curtsied at Randall, who nodded in return.

Freddy envied that one ability, that Randall could see her. He would rather not pay whatever price Randal paid to obtain such a gift,

"This is the Ursa Medvedeva. Like Marty Bitterman, she's into film."

"I'm producing, now." Ursa said, attempting not to speak in an accent.

Her name is Bear Bear?

Randall snorted.

"What?" Ursa's eyes shifted beneath her delicate glasses, sweat beading around the goggles set on her forehead.

"Fereshte is glad to meet you, Ursa." Freddy might have nudged Fereshte, if he could.

Ursa made a noncommittal nod.

"Fereshte, this is Martin Bitterman, scourge of the film media, and pirate of the seas of celluloid."

"Name's Marty! Good to meet ya!" Marty said, sticking out his right hand, and shaking air.

Oh, he's a cocky one, isn't he?

"Olivia Green here is a Shrink."

The Phrenologist.

Randall snickered at Olivia. Freddy smiled. "Yes."

"I double-majored. Psychology, and parapsychology, no big deal." Olivia was uncertain where to face.

"This unpleasant hunk of burning rage has a degree in forensic science, and Engineering."

"My focus was Forensic Anthropology. My degree in engineering is just engineering."

"It's 'just engineering' says the rich badass with two degrees."

Jack Spade gave Freddy an ambiguous look, and Freddy shrugged. He regarded the troupe of paranormal investigators. "This is our team, Fereshte. Best there is."

Randall Gibbons nodded, his jowls quivering beneath his mustached face. "Let's get this party started."

♚ ♚ ♚

It took Randall forty-five minutes to get upstairs, and into the attic. Ursa was worried the house was too old to hold their weight, no less Randall's.
Jack assured her - assured everyone - Ursa's fears were unfounded.

Marty Bitterman set up a series of small cameras around the attic, and the battery reserves were gone almost immediately. After another hour setting up the generators, try had adequate power to run the equipment.

Let them know I'm sorry, Frederick.

"You have no reason to be sorry." Randall said, one thick, freckled, ginger haired hand resting against the outside wall of her ossuary. "You didn't ask for this."

Ursa, and Marty had the Cameras set up strategically around the attic.
Marty was a lot more excited than the brunette Ursa Medvedeva. Marty adjusted the higher on one of the tripods. "So, we're using infrared lenses, ultraviolet lenses, night vision lenses, and standard. We're running a digital recording on sensors that will trip the cameras if and when abnormal energy levels manifest."

Jack Spade was inside the homemade ossuary, examining Fereshte's remains. Every so often they heard him cursing, or coughing, or both.

Freddy stood nearby Randall, who was sweating profusely, breathing heavily, and deeply.

"Yo okay, man?"

Randall sucked in a deep lung full of air. "Yeah. You know how it is. Death's always at that door, and I'm always the next house over."

Olivia Green, blonde, and dressed comfortably, gazed around the attic, standing patiently.

Freddy, why are they all dressed in goggles and clothes from my time? They look like they're going to pilot a dirigible.

Randall snickered by the wall, snorting back laughter, and breaking into a momentary lapse of coughing fit.

Freddy wandered to Olivia's side. "Hey there, Blondie."

Hey there cutie." Olivia stumbled, suddenly.

"Watch it." Fereshte's voice manifested in Olivia's ear, but everyone heard it. Multiple flashes filled the attic with moments of strobing light.

Marty checked the infrared camera and saw a freeze frame of woman's shape standing beside Olivia, her mouth near Olivia's ear.

"Ursa, let's get some video set up. I've got confirmation on Camera Two."

Ursa grunted an affirmative, leaving the attic in a hurry to fetch some of the video cameras.

One thing Fereshte was absolutely certain was how sturdy Ursa looked, her broad back, and solid jaw. The girl probably had the cranial bumpage of a carriage driver.

At best.

"Are you okay, Fereshte?" Freddy walked over to the once-hidden entry to her room, and was leaned against its side.

Mr. Spade is finished assessing my skull. Frederick, he plucked it off my neck.

Freddy shuddered. "He's the best... knows exactly what he's doing."

All my hair fell off.

"It's ok, Fereshte." Freddy slid his hand tenderly down the wall of her room. Her ossuary. Her bone room. If she was murdered, and not a suicide, the narrative was changed entirely. It meant someone came to her and bashed her beautiful head in.
Lights out for Fereshte... except, of course, for the restless existence as a ghost, and the house.

Jack spade came out of the ossuary with a leather case, and a solemn expression. "We need to talk."

♚ ♚ ♚

Everyone sat together, in a semi-circle in front of Fereshte's ossuary. Her door was closed now, the lantern inside lit up, and her shadow cast against the dirty glass window.

Marty rigged a small microphone inside, based on similar construction as a crystal radio, and amplified off Fereshte's energy.

Her voice came in tinny, and ethereal, dragging out at the beginning, and end of her sentences. The crystals made it nearly effortless for her to speak.

"Thank you all." Fereshte's shadow made exaggerated movements as she regarded them each. Randall was the only one still standing. "Jack Spade tells me that Frederick's suspicions were correct. I was murdered."

"...someone got impatient." Jack interrupted, rising to a knee. "The base of a hair sample showed deposits of heavy metals poisoning... arsenic... Someone wanted you dead, and you weren't dying fast enough."

"Here, I have difficulty. I do not know who would want me to die. Other than me."

"Who lived here with you?"

"...it as me. My sister. My mother."

"Your father?" Olivia Green was taking notes.

"Father disappeared some years before in search of some silly hedge which about he would not stop going on."

"You had hired help?" Freddy remembered, French. Fereshte called him out on his bad accent, comparing it to her once maids.

"Yes..."

Randall cleared his throat. "I could find out."

♚ ♚ ♚

Randall Gibbons stood by, leaning along the interior of what would eventually become Fereshte's ossuary.

He watched her, flesh and blood, sitting bedside in mourning.
This was a scene he saw enough to know the outcome. Restless spirits fettered to an object, a place, or an idea.

Fereshte was a mystery to him, because according to Jack Spade she was murdered, and not by her own hand.

He always felt a little guilty peering into people's pasts like this. Always the smallest bit concerned they may see him... but this was at best a pure form of Recurring Psychokinetic Activity. A recording of events as they occurred as told by the walls that witnessed them. A three dimensional depiction of events.

Here, he was the ghost. Even if this were somehow real, they wouldn't - couldn't - see him.

At best he was standing in on a recording. At worse, he was a time traveler, again, only an objective observer.

Often, it was boring.

Randall opened himself to the memories as the house itself saw them, the emotions, and the thoughts. He became not Randall Gibbons, but a receiver.

Thought ceased in Randall as he became the memories, and the past.

Frederick... oh, by God... Frederick.

Fereshte wept, sitting at her bedside, her photos of Frederick fanned out in her lap. She stared at the book at her feet, musings on Socrates, and ignored the tears streaming down her cheeks, neglecting her handkerchief, as her tears fell in fat droplets on her dress, turning the velvet a darker, deeper green.

A year. A year and nothing is better. What is this life for, if not for love?
What is love, if not cruelty? Torturous fate is, parting we drone one another for all time, to be nothing, and nothing more than nothing.

All for naught.

To be no better than worm's meat, a corpsed shell moldering in wormy earth... from the world I came, alone.

Into it, I return.

God be damned.

"Mademoiselle?"

Fereshte's attention turned from Musings on Socrates, to her maid. She drew up the pale blue silken handkerchief to wipe her eyes. "Yes..." Fereshte felt her piece caught in her throat, and coughed. "Yes, Gabrielle?"

"Your tea, mademoiselle." Gabrielle's accent, French, was only a distant reminder of where from she once came.

"Thank you," she said, attempting to compose herself. Gabrielle glanced at her sympathetically, but offered no comfort. "That will do, Gabrielle. You're dismissed for today."

Gabrielle bowed her head in submission. "Mademoiselle, if it pleases you, I have duties yet unattended."

"Tomorrow." Fereshte poured her own hot water from the kettle into a sterling silver cup. A silly gift from Frederick in a time when he assumed her to be someone who cared for such silly baubles. Silver and gold never mattered, but mattered even less now.

"Mademoiselle..."

Fereshte did not lift her head when her eyes shifted from her cup to Gabrielle's eyes. She stopped pouring and placed the kettle next to a small black marble obelisk on her end table. "Dismissed, please, Gabrielle."

"...but of course, Mademoiselle." Gabrielle bowed her head, backing out of Fereshte's room. "If you need me, please send for me without hesitation."

"Good day, Gabrielle."

She waited until Gabrielle was gone, and opened the slim drawer beneath her end table. She drew a small glass vial from within, filled with a thick translucent liquid.

Fereshte uncorked the vial, and poured it's entire contents into her cup. She prepared her tea, scooping a teaspoon of black current tea from a small jar on her tea tray, and locking it into the infuser.

She lowered it into the hot water, and wept.

♚ ♚ ♚

Randall watched her fade out.

It was almost sad.

Almost.

Since his death experience (because a near-death-experience was not a correct statement: he did in fact die) he witnessed more suicides (or memories of suicide) than he could count.

This however was not a suicide.

She faded out - fast - cold. Now, Fereshte was snoring.

Gabrielle appeared again in the doorway.

Randall Gibbons raised a heavy ginger eyebrow.

"Mademoiselle!" Gabrielle, the French maid, looking every bit the part, rushed to Fereshte's side. She put a hand on Fereshte's shoulder, and shook her.

Other than breathing, she did not move.

"Mademoiselle!" Gabrielle was panicked. With a hand still on Fereshte's shoulder, she began screaming for help.

Randall cringed, Gabrielle's shrill cry ringing in his ears. The maid continued until her voice was hoarse, but Fereshte did not stir.

Randall was tempted to demand Gabrielle go, quickly, and get some help. He did not bother, of course, as he already knew the outcome.

Sometimes, though. Randall narrowed his eyes at Gabrielle. Sometimes you want the end to change.

"...rooting for the loser." He shifted feet.

"Well." Gabrielle slid her hand delicately down Fereshte's arm, leaned in, and kissed her forehead. Gabrielle stood, looking around Fereshte's room. "It appears, Mademoiselle that you will not stir. You cannot be woken up."

Gabrielle stared at Randall wide eyed, and for a moment he thought for certain - despite all his experience - she was looking directly at him.

"...you had everything." Gabrielle's crept her hand along the end table, finding the empty glass vial. She drew it into her hand, and brought it up to her eyes. "You asked for hemlock, and I did not dare ask why."

Gabrielle's voice lost it's pretense of servitude, and became a deep calm, unnerving even Randall, who felt chills creep over his neck and arms.

"...but I knew, Mademoiselle. I knew. You had wealth, and love. You let him go, to die. I know Frederick could never be mine, and please forgive me for my love of him... but I cannot, and will not forgive you."

Gabrielle felt the cool black marble obelisk near the tea tray, felt the sharp corners in the palm of her hand, cool, hard, and sharp.

"This past year I tried desperately to feed you the arsenic." Gabrielle sat beside Fereshte, holding the black marble obelisk in on hand, and stroking her mistress's hair with the other. "You simply refused to die. I replaced your silly hemlock with chloral hydrate."

Chloral hydrate. The words were wrapped in Gabrielle's accent like they were made for she to speak them, and she alone.

Chloral Hydrate.

Gabrielle slipped Fereshte the means for Fereshte to slip herself a Mickey Finn.

"...please, when you meet The Lord, Jesus Christ, and Saint Peter at Heaven's Gates, do not rebuke me, Mademoiselle. I have always loved you as I loved your Frederick."

Fereshte lay still.

"I will leave you beautiful news to depart this ugly life, mademoiselle. Your Frederick is alive. The news came only yesterday. I wanted to tell you... and... and I am ashamed of myself that I did not tell you... but if I did, how would I make available myself to greet and comfort our Frederick?"

Gabrielle set the obelisk on the end table, and arranged Fereshte on the bed, centering her, and evening out her mistress's dress, and fanning her pictures nearby the same hand Fereshte held her empty silver cup.

Gabrielle took the time to neatly spread out Fereshte's hair so it covered here pillow as though she were a precious diamond for presentation.

Gabrielle stood, and looked Fereshte over. She nodded once with satisfaction, taking the black marble obelisk into her hand.

"I will make certain he knows how much you loved him, then I will comfort him." Gabrielle wasted no time bashing the side of Feteshte's skull in; Fereshte who never woke, and died without ever knowing it.

After she was certain Fereshte was not going to wake, she stepped away, wiping the bloodied marble sculpture on Fereshte's stockings.

Gabrielle hurried out, the black marble obelisk in hand.

Randall stared at Fereshte's corpse until the room grew dim, dust laden, and musty, as it returned to its present state.

Randall drew on as deep a breathe as he could, but his lungs were on the verge of betrayal. His talents sometimes had dire costs.

He would need his oxygen before he could continue.

♚ ♚ ♚

Down stairs, the members of the PRDS sat on the stairs waiting for Randall Gibbons to catch his breath.

Jack Spade had a half smoked cigar in his mouth. "I did some toxicology. The vial we found under Fereshte's bed had traces of Chloral Hydrate. The loose hair had a lot of arsenic in it."

Frederick, what's going on?

Freddy, sitting against the wall to the side adjacent to the stairwell looked to Randall, and realizing he could not see Fereshte, put the palm of his hand to the lower wall. "You were poisoned... it didn't seem to work... and you didn't drink hemlock, you drank a strong sedative. Your maid struck you in the head."

"Repeatedly." Randall heaved a deep breathe.

"Repeatedly." Freddy nodded.

"Commonly, at this point, we would want to relocate your remains." Ursa's accent echoed in the stairwell. "This could help you move forward."

Marty Bitterman had a camera in hand, looked pale, and a little shaken from what he saw on the displays. "The next steps would be to find out what's anchoring you here."

Olivia Green was the only one among them, except for Randall, who seemed remotely sympathetic beyond the scope of their research. "The goal is to help you resolve your anchor, or anchors. Then you should be able to move on."

Freddy, I'm scared.

"Freddy, if I could talk to you outside?" Randall looked like he was struggling to speak.

"Of course."

♚ ♚ ♚

When they were a half block from the house, Randall seemed improved. "You survived."

"What?"

"Victorian you. Frederick from her time. Whatever she thought happened, she was wrong. I saw - I heard - the maid, Freddy. She murdered Fereshte so she could pursue you."

"What does this all mean, Randall?"

"It means we're finished here. We are, but not you. Find her anchor, and free her."

"How?"

"Very carefully, I imagine." Randall spun a one-eighty in his hoveround. "You know you're Frederick. I'm sure that's unsettling. Use that to remember."

"Right." Freddy nodded, walking alongside Randall. "How come Sigil didn't make it out?"

"She's investigating Corona, California's centennial anniversary."

"Why?"

"Don't really know, yet." Randall stopped a moment on his hoveround. "That's out next stop. Ursa's not coming with. Neither is Martin."

"What will you do with all the data you gathered?"

"Research, and develop I suppose. Do you need help burying her remains?"

"I guess that would be super."

♚ ♚ ♚

Freddy helped the PRDS pack their gear.

Ursa Medvedeva spent her farewell not saying farewell, sitting shotgun in the passenger seat of Randall's van.

Marty Bitterman showed Freddy a number of video clips featuring blurs of green moving in and out of the frame, a pale woman in a green dress moving around the attic in bright flashes.

That's me, Frederick!

Freddy smiled widely. "Fereshte's likes your work, Bitterman."

I'm really here, really present!

"Of course you are."

Marty lifted an eyebrow. "...of course I'm what?"

Fereshte's giggle echoed off the walls.

"No, no, I'm talking to Fereshte."

"Of course you are." Marty closed the display on his camera. "I'm glad you like my work, Miss."

You're very good at what you do, Mr. Bitterman.

"She says your work is very good, that you are very good at what you do."

Fereshte said nothing further, and Marty continued putting away his film equipment.

"It was good to see you again, Freddy." Olivia Green hugged Freddy, pulling him tightly to her chest.
A thick tension formed in the air, and they were forced back with a sudden wide berth between them.

Miss Green, you will kindly unhand Frederick, and I advise you to keep your affections to yourself!

Freddy blushed, but Olivia only laughed. "Sorry, Fereshte! I didn't mean any harm. I've never before been touched by a spirit. It was mean spirited curiosity."

Just keep your hands to yourself, madam! I am watching you.

"Fereshte says to keep your hands to yourself."

Olivia smiled coyly, and shrugged, continuing to the door. "Don't be a stranger, Freddy Gordon."

Oooh! She makes me so angry!

"You have no reason to worry." Freddy drew a deep breath in, and released it slowly as Jack Spade arrived lastly, outstretching his hand toward Freddy.

Freddy shook his hand firmly, but Jack did not immediately let go. "I've never liked you much, Freddy. You've always been kind of aloof, and kind of a fool."

"Anagram for aloof." Freddy said, pulling his hand away. Jack released it.

"I've never liked you much, but that doesn't mean we aren't friends. Everyone has family they don't much like. You're doing something big here, Fred. I don't understand it, but I can relate. Sometimes big things just fall on your lap, you know?"

Freddy wanted to be angry. Jack Spade was always kind of an asshole, but he was right. "The feeling's mutual, Jack. You going out to Corona with the rest of them?"

"The City calls, and I can't let Sigil answer alone. We've got some pretty good support out there. You ever meet Brade?"

"Braid?"

"No, her name is Brade - like the word Blade but spoken in Japanese English - Brade."

"You're a racist bastard, man. No, I don't know her. Haven't met her yet."

"You've got to meet her. Get your ass out to Corona before the shit hits the fan, man. Girl can throw knives. She's so dangerous with her knives, she can actually stick a knife through a pane of glass without it shattering."

"No." Freddy shook his head. "I don't buy it."

"I'm not trying to sell it to you. She can do it. You've got to see, it's wild, man."

Freddy, and Jack fell into an awkward silence. Freddy huffed a breath, and Jack shrugged. "It was good to see you, Freddy. I mean that. Don't let saving souls get you killed."

With that, Jack continued past Freddy, and out the door.

Freddy an Randal were alone. "You two need to understand something."

Go ahead.
"Go ahead." Freddy, and Fereshte said in unison.

"This may be goodbye. Jack consecrated your remains, Miss Fereshte. Once we lay them to rest in the cemetery, that may be it for you."

What do you mean?

"In some cases - in many I've handled - when a spirits remains are laid to rest, or in extreme cases destroyed, the spirit moves on."

Destroyed?

"We're not destroying her remains, right?"

Randall laughed, and it sounded like a bear drowning. "No, Freddy, Fereshte. I said extreme cases. Such as when a spirit is hurting people, with no intention to stop."

Oh.

Freddy looked relieved.

Are you suggesting Frederick and I should say our goodbyes now, Mr. Gibbons?

"I'll be waiting in the van. You two, take your time. There's no immediate hurry, and I don't care if the others get bored. Now would be a good time to let her know anything you haven't said." Randall waddled to the door, and climbed into his hoveround.

Tension rose up in the foyer, and the door shut slowly.

Anything you haven't said, Frederick?

♚ ♚ ♚

Freddy shared the abridged version with Fereshte, how he actually survived Egypt, and how Gabrielle withheld the news.

What of my mother, and sister?

"...the hemlock extracts you sent for found its way into them, instead of you."

The sound of Fereshte's weeping echoed down from the attic.

How could she kill my whole family? We were so good to her!

"...she didn't want to share me with you. She blamed you for my death."

You just said you didn't die!

"...and she blamed you for even the possibility of my death. She said she loved you, but you didn't deserve me."

...and what do you think, Frederick Gordon?

"I think she is a murderer, though I don't think that me from your time knew. She was going to tell him - me - you could not handle the burden of my death, that took your own life in my absence, and she was going comfort me."

I know what that means. Did you accept her Frederick?

"How should I know? I don't remember anything from back then. I believe, because I saw. I believe because you exist, and I believe because you believe. In a fucked up way, it makes perfect sense."

Would you find out what happened to her when I am gone?

"Easy. I'm not ready for you to be gone, Fereshte. I just found you again."

I could not bear to know she won, Frederick. I could not bear to know that I died so she could take you like some prize.

"Let's one thing at a time."

I am so tired of suffering your loss, again, and again.

"One thing at a time."

♚ ♚ ♚

Randall led the precession from Fereshte's home to the cemetery.

Working together, it took little time to dig Fereshte a plot.

There would be no coffin, no stained glass windows, or ceremony.

When the plot was deep enough, Freddy jumped into the hole, and Jack Spade carefully handed Fereshte's remains down in a black linen sheet.

Freddy frowned over her remains. It was time to put Fereshte to rest.

♚ ♚ ♚

The PRDS and their Mystery Van were long gone, when Freddy first noticed the coming nightfall. What may have scared him mere weeks ago - days ago really - was now a dull frustration filed somewhere in the back of his mind

Alone in a graveyard no longer held the same fear factor it would even a few days ago.

He saw this movie, too.

The guy died.

Except, it didn't matter. Not anymore.
The guy always dies in those movies, and even if he were in a movie, it wasn't one of those movies.
There were no walking corpses mindlessly shambling along, creeping, and crawling in search of blood.
There was no Vincent Price narrating the too well choreographed dance of zombies as they closed in on Ola Ray, nor was Michael there in his tattered red leather jacket.

It was quiet: quiet as the grave, if ever there were a cliché to fall back on.

No, this was not his personal horror story, at least not unless horror was prescribed as the loss of love, a broken heart, and quite possibly a lifetime of loneliness.

Fereshte was the reason why.

He stood up to J. Carroll Grady - quit his job - got rehired and promoted... and all of it so he could finally be with someone who genuinely loved him.

Freddy waited until after sunset, and bid Fereshte farewell.

Much like the PRDS, he was there only moments, and in the moments that followed those, Freddy too was long gone, tail lights on the horizon leaving a Hope Valley.

♚ ♚ ♚

The company car hauled itself along the highway like it was fresh off the assembly line.

What am I doing?

"I said my goodbyes." Freddy answered himself defensively. He did not need to imagine Fereshte's accusing voice in his head, he did plenty well enough on his own.

Highway 927 was a remarkably smooth ride, for all its trouble it gave him early on, for all the bumps, dips, pitfalls and potholes; J. Carroll Grady's company car owned the road.

Meant to be together, huh? You're a pussy, Freddy Gordon. It's no wonder Ursa was fucking some street urchin. At least he knew what he wanted out of life. At least there was never that wishy-washy indecision.

"Fuck you. Shuttup."

Consider me fucked, then. Except I'm you. The part of you that knows this is some bitch bullshit you're pulling, you fucking hood rat coward of a man. No, you don't even measure as a man.

Freddy pressed his foot harder to the gas pedal.

You can't outrun you, man. No matter how fast you go, I'll be right here.

Freddy put the pedal flat to the floor. "If I put is through a tree..."

Please. You know this car isn't going through a tree. Even if it could, the safety features alone would make it seem like you drove into a marshmallow. You don't have the guts to drive this through a sapling, and besides, you know you would die.

"Peace and quiet at least."

Do you think Fereshte would agree with that? How has been her peace and quiet?

"Whatever." Freddy lifted his foot off the gas, though.

Lights in the distance told him he was coming upon a town.
His traitorous thoughts were thankfully silent in his head as the lights grew more, and more numerous along the highway in the distance.

You don't remember this town, do you? You didn't see it coming in.

"I wasn't paying attention. No. Shuttup. Last thing I need is people seeing me talk to myself. Want to get committed?"

It's your crises of conscience, Freddy. Your own guilt.

The company car crawled along the highway at twenty miles per hour by the time he reached the heart of the town.
It was a place not too different from Hope Valley, except there were people here.
Strings of lights lit up the patios to a few different bars, one of them blasting honky tonk music from what sounded a live band.
Freddy could see people outside, drinking, and a cloud of cigarette smoke hovering over each, wafting in, and out of the patio doors.

Some glanced at his car as he passed, and some stared outright.

He continued along, suddenly overwhelmed by fatigue. It was, after all, a long day.

Freddy overcame the desire to stop and ask for directions to a hotel, or motel, partly because of the way the townies stared at him.

It did not even matter if the place was seedy, so long as he could get some real rest.

Real rest, you selfish prick. You should be back there, in Hope Valley solving this, and wrapping it up.

Freddy slowed to a stop, turning into a parking lot.

Finally, a motel.

He parked Grady's car, and got out. He could hear the music on the chill of the evening's breeze, and smell the mix of various tobaccos, and weed commingling from the bars.

Hey, Freddy.

He ignored his nagging conscience.

Really, you need to see this one, Freddy. Look! Look up!

Freddy obeyed himself, his eyes rising from the parking lot to the motel sign. The whim of red neon light disappointed him, his first reaction in seeing No Vacancy as bold, and plain as a red sun showering him in its headache light.
Something in him, however, compelled him to look higher up, his eyes following his gaze up past the red neon disappointment, to the marquee.

Freddy's blood felt as though it became ice in his veins, his heart physically cramping in his chest, his ribs creaking in his sternum.

RETURN TO HOPE VALLEY
FERESHTE IS NOT AT PEACE

Freddy read it twice more, shook his head violently, read it again, and shook his head violently slapping himself repeatedly like an idiot. When he returned his gaze to the marquee, the same message was still there.

Yeah, you asshole. You just run on, now, go on back to where you came from.

Freddy did not have time to correct himself for ending thoughts in preposition. He had enough gas to make it back to Hope Valley.

He charged his phone along the way.

♚ ♚ ♚

Freddy was not yet ready to return to Fereshte, or her home, if she were no longer present.

There were plenty of real questions risen in his head as he sped back, once again, to Hope Valley.

Running was always easier. He ran, his whole life, and had little in the way of regrets. Some people lamented never knowing what might have been, but not Freddy.

Freddy cherished it.

What might have been was pure fantasy. It was make believe. It was imagination run wild, and not even an educated imagination. What might have been was a line of thought purely selfish.

What might have been actually meant: what can you do for me? How can I achieve this feeling I'm feeling now without you?

It was a lazy, easy, oversimplified way or thinking that often resulted in overthinking something long gone, immutable, and purely self-centered.

The idea of imagining any ideal scenario was purely one sided.

Once something was over, it was over.

Freddy was particularly talented with moving forward, and not looking back on what could not be changed.

...this cannot be changed.

"You're really starting to ducking annoy me."

We don't want to be a hypocrite, do we?

"It isn't the same. Fereshte is the one. The truth is, she can't do anything for me. I'm more worried about what I can't do for her."

Your fear of failure is selfish. You would have run based entirely on 'what if?' when you know - you know - it's the same thing as what might have been, you jackass.

"I've had just about enough of you."

Of you, Freddy. I'm just we, and we're just you, and we are all together.

"Okay, Lennon."

John, or Vladamir?

"Lennon, not Lenin."

I would say you got me there, but being that we're you, I'm not sure tripping yourself up is a sign of mental stability.

"The bullshit I worry over." Freddy pulled into Hope Valley just as the moon found the center of the sky. Apparently his conscience was finished upsetting him, at least for now.
He patrolled the streets of Hope Valley, Population: 78 (minus seventy-seven). For such a small town, there was a lot to explore.

Freddy found what he was looking for within a half hour of his arrival; it was obvious enough, once he saw it, he knew it immediately. It was subtle enough that he passed it four, or five times in the half hour of his search.

The Library.

Not were town had one, but he was certain Hope Valley did, and he was rewarded for his persistence.
Here, there would be newspapers, and maybe even records. Newspapers could have important announcements, and articles for the time, and maybe insight into Fereshte's world, the world as she knew it.

Freddy parked. He would return to Feteshte's, even I she was not there. Before he did, he would have to do her the justice of a real investigation.

He wanted so badly to be an investigative reporter, and this was his shot.

An old murder, whose plot born from envy, and exacted with both love and malice, was executed with serpent calculation.

The recipe for a Victorian-Gothic Novella. Obviously he couldn't include the part about ghosts, or his strange romance, but he could write about the romance between Ye Olde Frederick and Fereshte, and the histories they touched in their tumultuous experience of the world back then.

He would call it Beloved Darkness.

"Yeah." Freddy smiled, pulling the first board away from the Library entrance. The wood was brittle, the nails little more than long rusted iron pegs.

First, the facts.

♚ ♚ ♚

It was dark when he finally entered the athenaeum, the moon exceptionally large, full, and bright.

Barring the explanation for a town that seemed to die overnight in near perfect condition, Freddy felt little concern when he entered the athenaeum.

It's a Library. Freddy sighed. Why not just call it a Library?

His appreciation for literature aside; his inquisitive nature that drove his struggle into the role of investigative journalism aside; sometimes simplicity was OK.

Palpable tension lived in the Hope Valley Athenaeum. He knew this tension.

Maybe not this tension.

Girlish laughter echoed out of the books, off the walls, and from all around Freddy.

"Fereshte?"

"You know I am not."

The silken fluidity of her accent was unmistakable.

Gabrielle.

"No, this isn't possible." Freddy slowly backed toward the doors when he heard them slam shut, blanketing him in darkness.

Maybe this was his personal horror story. He saw this one before: the guy died.

The dumb guy who goes walking into haunted houses, graveyards, and libraries always died. Who cares if this was supposed to be his tragic love story; tragedies can be horrors into their own.

"What is so impossible?"

Freddy stumbled in the darkness - not only stumbling - he was pushed.

She pushed him - shoved him really - and a he shoved him again, pushing him forward away from the door, and then back.

Her touch felt very solid.

Far more tangible than Fereshte's ghostly embrace.

She shoved him forward hard, and he tripped over his own feet and face planted into the tiled floor of the library, as his eyes adjusted, he saw his head barely missed the sharp corner of a table.

Dull silver moonlight spilled through boarded windows, and, and by the light of the moonlit night, he could vaguely see the library.

Girlish laughter echoed around him.

"What the hell is your problem?"

"I knew it was you the moment of the first time you came riding in on your automobile, that loud junk heap..."

"I moved up in the world."

"Did you, Frederick?"

"My name is Freddy!" Freddy's voice echoed off the acoustic of the library.
Freddy's head rang, his teeth clattered, and he saw an instant, dazzling display of bright stars in an instant, feeling the impact before he felt the pain.

Gabrielle punched him.

She definitely he more oompf than Fereshte... or Fereshte was going easy on him.

Freddy shook his head, rising to his knees, his left hand on the edge if the library's table.

"I recognized you, and I thought to myself: Gabrielle, he has finally come back to you... He has finally returned." Freddy felt the impact from another punch on the opposite side of his jaw, strong enough to turn his head, but not to knock him down. Her voice was a whisper in his ear. "...then you went into her home, like some foolish lost and starving dog who found his way' home."

"A dog?" Freddy pulled himself to his feet, using the table's edge as support. "The only dog I see here is you, you bitch!"

"You see nothing Frederick." He heard the loud sound of feet running along the tabletop, and Freddy saw stars simultaneous to her kick to the tip of his chin as it connected. He felt one of his lower canine teeth chip when his jaw closed shut, and he tasted the bitter coppery taste of blood as he struck the tiled floor, flat on his back.

There was a sudden weight in his lap, hands on his chest, legs straddling him, hot breath in his ear. "I will help you to join me. We can finally be together, Frederick, and this time there is nothing you can do to stop me."

Her hands crept up his chest, to his throat. Freddy clawed at his neck, but he could not touch her. He tried to push her off him, but there was nothing to touch.

Why was she able to do this?

"Shhh." Gabrielle's ethereal voice was hot breath in his ear, her weight almost pleasant in the right places. "Soon we be together. Give it up to me, Frederick. Breathe your last breath, and join me."

"Wait!" Freddy choked out a cough that sprayed his mouth full of blood in a fine mist. "Wait!"

The pressure on his windpipe softened a little. "Speak then, Frederick. Speak, and then you join me."

Her weight dissipated off him. Freddy propped himself up onto his elbows, and coughed. "Is that what you call love?"

Love, and vengeance, Frederick.

She was no longer a voice in his ears, and like Fereshte, was only a voice in his mind. So, there were rules, in fact. "Gabrielle, why can you touch me so strongly?"

I am strong.

"Yes, but why aren't you able to be everywhere at once?"

Girlish laughter, cold this time, and faint. Much weaker than when he first arrived.

I am not bound, Frederick, or fetters by any walls. I am unbound, free to roam where I please. To see what I please.

"Were you in the house with me?"

Gabrielle did not answer.

"Gabrielle! Were you in the house with me?"

I cannot go in there, Frederick.

Freddy nodded. It was a short sprint to the door, and as free as she was, Gabrielle was still bound by rules. More importantly, her rules were not like Fereshte's. Gabrielle was only one, and that one Gabrielle was limited to wherever she was in the moment.

She was limited.

Of course, if he did not make it to the door, that was it.
He was dead meat, and possibly spending eternity with the French madwoman that killed Fereshte.

She could touch him; he could not touch her. Anything she did to him cost her strength.
Talking, moving things - attacking him - was costly.

Even if he cleared the doors, could she - would she - follow him?

Laying around like a gimp on his elbows wasn't going to help one way, or the other.

Freddy rose up, knees shaking, and broke into a run for the library's doors.

♚ ♚ ♚

Freddy hit the front doors with the entire force of his run, throwing himself shoulder first into the disappointing, and painful realization that his method was not going to work.

It always worked in the movies, unless of course it was a comedy.

He did not believe for a moment his life a comedy. This was not a comedic situation.

"Context." Freddy rubbed his shoulder, bracing against the door until he was on his feet.

I knew you would run.

"You're trying to kill me."

I'm trying to bring us together, again.

"Yeah, not interested, Gabrielle."

What would you know of interest? You do not even know who you are, no less who you love.

"I know I don't love you." Freddy felt a semi-solid slap over the right side of his face; this one did not hurt. It was enough that he knew she slapped him.

We had a family.

"The hell we did."

It is true, in the basement of this very library, there are records of our life... out marriage... our children.

"Okay, listen. Listen well. I'm not going to climb down into some dark basement because a homicidal French ghost wants me to."

You cannot know what you need know until you see for yourself.

"No, I saw this movie. The guy dies."

I could just end it all now if you do not cooperate, Frederick.

"If you could, you would have tried again, already."

Silence.

"What happened?"

What do you mean?

"I mean after you killed my woman, what happened?"

Is that something want to know. Or do you stall only to fruitlessly attempt escape once more?

"Just tell me."

♚ ♚ ♚

Had it been the first time Gabrielle took another human life, she might feel sick to her stomach.
In fact, the first time she took a life, she wretched, and vomited until her stomach was void.

Never once in all her life did she imagine she could get caught.

Not her.

...but, it happened: Gabrielle got caught, and by the help.

The irony.

Her deepest secrets he kept in her diary, written in the tongue of her home. Her mistake was assuming that hired help would be as honorable, and true to their duties as she was to hers.

Maybe, yes, she put an end to her last employer, but she did nothing if not respect her mistress' privacy while still in her employ.

Freddy came back.

Had she shared only a week earlier with Fereshte the news of Frederick's survival, and coming return, her mistress would not have sought death. Had she spoken true, the entire Sayyah family might live yet.

When Fereshte sent for the hemlock extract, Gabrielle knew - she knew - she had her. The timing could not have been better. The how was no longer a problem. Gabrielle did not have the strength to overcome the entire family on her own, but if Farnaz, and Sehar went quietly, no one would have to know Fereshte would die alone, in her bed, high away in her locked room, in her attic.

Fereshte had to die - she did die - and she went without any real fear, or pain.

All of that, so she and her Frederick could have at least a fair chance. A life together.

A family.

Of course what she knew, and why she said were two entirely different things.
To Frederick, she explained in her utmost sorrow, a grieving Fereshte as inconsolable - and how could she be another way? Her future husband, a man of peace slain by the mussel men! People so close to Fereshte's very own.

Gabrielle told Frederick Fereshte returned to her native Persia.

Mother, and Sister Sayyah could not bear it, and took their own lives.

That was the story.

Then Sophia found her book, read her book. She told on her.

Gabrielle was certain no one would believe a maid.

The American law believed.

Frederick believed... and why not? The whole thing was the truth, and nothing but the truth, so help her God. As she had to swear in the trial.

Her death sentence written in her own handwriting.

The trial was quick.

America had not so quickly forgotten the XYZ Affair, the quasi war between her country, and theirs.
Peaceful cessation of hostilities. Yes, sure. That's one for the books.

People died. Americans died... and those cowboys, oh Oui, they will have their justice.

Hers came by the name of a Judge called Isaac C. Parker. The Hangin' Judge.

Americans. They so do love their cowboys.

Of course, they wouldn't know what that meant until the cowboys were a whisper in the lonesome winds those cowboys so loved to sing.

Gabrielle too, hanged.

That short drop, and the sudden stop. It actually hurt for a moment. She should have begged for a firing squad.

Worse, death was slow coming. A broken neck was not an instance of death, but a paralyzing hell.

She lay in the morgue a day, sunset, to sunset before she took her last breath.

Then suddenly she was free. Hell sent its finest horsemen to collect her soul, and she sent it back.

...and it fled faster back to hell than when first it came.

Hell.

Hell would have been better than this. Walking an empty world alone. She terrified all she touched, horrified all she tried to love.

Hell was here, and in the lake of fire laughed the devil, and all his fallen angels.

She watched Frederick go, taking with him their child. He left... and she was alone.

Time passed, years passed. Generations passed. She wandered the streets of Hope Valley, between old gas lamps that became lamps of electrical ingenuity, feeding stations, and troughs, replaced by stations for horseless carriages called automobiles, strange machines what fed on petrol, and vomited a vile smoke out their metal asses.

Music changed. It got faster, and then harder... and in every generation Frederick returned, and he ignored her.

...but he always went to her home. Always moved into that infernal house, never changing it, never taking away from its memories. Sometimes Frederick was married, sometimes not. Sometimes he was a young man, or a venerable handsome fox. Sometimes he was called Frederick, or Fred... sometimes just by his last name. She counted two times he came as a soldier, and left in what the world called world wars, these wars to end all wars.

He never returned from either, but he always came back... and each generation she grew stronger, and angrier.

Time passed, because time has nothing better to do than die in its seconds, reborn as minutes, and transcend into hours, days, weeks.

Months.

Years.

Then one night Hope Valley stopped.

Empty, hollow, and cold. The music stopped. The automobiles stopped. The petrol stopped. No more wars, or women in their ever shortening dresses, their scandalously delightful ever tightening sweaters.

No more children, no more Christmas, no more New Year.

...and the only thing that did not crack, or fade, or die was the one thing she killed so long ago.

The house that became Fereshte. The house she could not touch - could not break - could not destroy.

In the end she was the one beaten, an ignoble death for a maid with the illusions of love, and royalty.

Gabrielle knew there were other restless dead in Hope Valley. On those times it rained, she saw them, their strange music, and lively parades; their booths, and glittering lights; the ghost of the town behind the ghost town, it's celebrant dead existing on in a perpetually ignorant bliss, and she, a mere ghost to the ghosts.

Gabrielle wept.

She wept forever, until finally forever stopped when Frederick came into town in from a broken down shambling white automobile, limping into the coming storm, and right into the very place he always has.

He wandered into the waiting arms of his mussel woman.

...but Gabrielle came out of her stupor, and into the waking reality that he returned.

She would have him, or he would die for her trying.

♚ ♚ ♚

"This is not a fucking basement."

Basement. Catacombs. It is the same difference.

"What. The. Fuck."

It is the only way you will believe. Down here, in a place unmarked, lies the skeletal remains of a woman hanged for murder. Wrongfully punished.

"How many people did you kill before they caught you?"

Including a the Mistress, and her family?

"Sure."

It did not take much for me to help you forget, no?"

"How many?"

...there was my eldest sister in Arles, in my home, met with a horrible accident.

"An accident."

Oui. She fell from a balcony. It was a pity, for she was to be heir to mother, and father's fortune.

"You come from wealth?" Freddy continued a few steps into the catacombs, and stopped. It was not a matter of whether or not he saw this one, before, or not. He did not care if the guy died, or saved the day.
Gabrielle was a real threat - a real danger - and her moral compass had no needle.
If she had plans to murder him, there was not a lot he could do to stop her. Not down here, at least.

He would cross that bridge when he got there.

No. Sadly it was a misunderstanding. What three young girls believed wealth to be... was little more than sarcasm.

"Your sister accidentally fell because you misunderstood sarcasm?"

Oui.

"You're okay with this?"

Oh, no. Frederick, there should have been a fortune. Then her death would not have been in vain.

"What the hell is wrong with you?"

There should be a vase with pilot your right, Frederick. It is filled with oil. There is a torch above that. You could light the sconces and bring some life to this dark place.

"Gabrielle, I don't want to be down here with you."

You would prefer your mussel woman?

"I would prefer not to be down here at all! I don't like basements, I am less fond of catacombs."

There was a moment where the tension in the air was thick.

Almost sharp.

It hurt Freddy's ears, like altitude, or the start of a pressure headache.

A moment later, there were several sparks, and several burning sconces.

You must see, I understand. If you see, then it will ease your understanding.

That word again. Understanding... and Gabrielle used it in the same way as the vampires in movies. It was always the same.

You don't understand. Bite. Now you understand.

Eternal thirst for blood.

Your trepidation is unfounded.

"If I have any trepidation, it is because you attempted to strangle me not more than twenty minutes ago."

I was not attempting. I was succeeding. If I wanted you dead I would pull one of the ceiling stones onto you, or light you ablaze with a sconce. Or simply finish strangling you.

Freddy felt her hand take his, and she led him deeper into the catacombs.

Stop fighting this, Frederick. I promise not to kill you.

"I promise I don't believe you."

That is fair.

♚ ♚ ♚

The corridors, and paths looked the same under flickering torchlight. There were long routes where it as harder to breathe, than others. There were longer routes where it appeared they were going deeper underground.

It was some far reaching corner of the pillared, and arched catacombs when they reached an unmarked plot in the wall, bricked shut.

Adjacent to the wall, however, was a stone flight of stairs leading upward to wherever places like this led at the end of the line.

The corridors were harder, and harder to breathe, and Freddy felt an idiot for his failure to recognize what the fire did to help in that.

This is where I lay.

Freddy saw the skeletal remains of numerous people surrounding her unmarked grave. "All these people... Gabrielle, did you do this?"

Yes.

"Gabrielle, why?"

Men like these strung me to the gallows. May as well it should have been the guillotine, no? Do not preach to me of right, or wrong Frederick, until you drown in your own bile because you cannot move...

"Yeah, yeah, because they hanged you. Whatever. Look at all these dead people."

Yes, Frederick, and you are among them.

♚ ♚ ♚

"Back the fuck up!" Freddy ran for the stairs, but he felt Gabrielle's hands on his chest.
They were not the same sensation of solidity he felt earlier, though some of her force returned.

Slowly now, darling. There is no hurry.

Freddy swiped at his chest, trying to brush her off - to wipe her off, forcing himself up the stony stairwell one step at a time, fighting the current of Gabrielle's force.

Freddy, be calm!

"Fuck you, you French psycho!"

What does French have to do with it?

"You're not going to kill me without a fight."

I'm not going to kill you, Frederick. It will not solve our dilemma, no?

Freddy slowed his breathing, forcing himself calm.

There you go. Shhh.

"Gabby, I'm not doing this for you."

It was always for me, Frederick. All these bones, all these dead, and you too.

"What the fuck?"

It is how I know to kill you will not bring you home, no?

"You killed me?"

Just one incarnation! I believed for certain you could join me in eternity, but you... your soul is tied elsewhere.

The catacombs were getting harder, and harder to breathe.
The sconces burned, their fiery flicker lending their light to strange shadows, burning up air, burning up life.

Burning.

"This is going to suck so fucking much."

Pardon?

Freddy ran - full sprint - toward the unmarked place, the shabby wooden box that passed as a coffin shattered as he piled into it. Rotten wood splintered, spilling dusty bones in a tattered linen dress onto the stone floor.

Frederick! What are you doing?

Freddy felt Gabrielle's semi-tangible hands pulling at him, grasping at his shirt.
Freddy grabbed at the sconce above Gabrielle's remains. He heard the skin of his hand cooking before he felt it, the smell of burning meat filling his nostrils as he lifted it from its slot in the wall.

Freddy screamed through clenched teeth, throwing the burning sconce onto the shattered, rotted coffin, the tattered linen dress, and Gabrielle's brittle bones.

Her scream echoed through the corridors.

Freddy!

Her voice echoed through his head, and through the long corridors of the catacombs. Gabrielle, unseen, lashed out, knocking sconces from the walls, spilling the hot burning oil over the stone floors all the way back toward the library.

Freddy turned point on his heel, grasping his charred hand, and sprinting for the stairs, rushing up. He felt a draft of cold air in his face, rushing down from somewhere in the world above.

♚ ♚ ♚

Freddy burst through heavy wood planks, splitting his scalp in two places, taking a rusted iron nail across the cheek, and a large wooden splinter through the shoulder as flames following him up the stairs in a backdraft that followed immediately with a strong vacuum of air that swooshed past him like the catacombs beneath him were drawing in a deep breath.

Freddy was back in the graveyard, in the very crypt where one of his earlier incarnations lay in coffin.

The guy did die after all. The guy, being him. Freddy smiled a lopsided smile, and forced the heavy doors open, bleeding now profusely from his scalp. He tilted his head back to keep the blood from flowing into his face, and eyes, though his cheek, too, was wet with blood from the gash that old iron nail cut into him.
Freddy grunted, subduing a scream as he pulled the thick splinter, half the length of his forearm, from his shoulder.

His teeth, clenched so tightly, made cracking sounds in his jaw, and one of them - a lower canine - actually cracked, and chipped away, sending a sharp, brief pain through his mouth.

Outside his crypt - the crypt of one of his last incarnations - in the distance, he saw the Library in flames. A moment later, he felt it before he heard it, a shockwave rippled over the graveyard, followed by the sound of explosion as the library went up in a brilliant flash of many a quaint, and ancient forgotten lore.

Freddy, despite his pain, smiled at the thought of Edgar Allen Poe.

Freddy rushed - rushing relative to what his injuries would allow - back into his crypt as burning books began to rain down, landing in and around the graveyard.

In the distance he saw two, maybe three more houses begin to burn. His heart skipped a best in his chest, until he saw for certain that Fereshte's home was - not surprising to Freddy - completely untouched by the flames.

Relieved, and without hesitation, Freddy slumped onto the floor of the crypt.

The stone was cold.

He lay down, like warm blood pooling around his head on the crypt's granite floor.

Fereshte. The last thought in his mind as the world became darkness, taking away all his pain.

♚ ♚ ♚

"I found something I think can help us."

What is it?

Freddy stared at his hand, the ropey veins beneath his skin accentuated by liver spots, and thick gray hair. His voice was rough, raspy in his throat. "I hid it in the cemetery, where she can't go."

Frederick, what are you not saying?

"Nothing that cannot later be resolved."

Freddy caught his reflection in the filthy glass of Fereshte's Ossuary. His eyes were cavernous, sleep starved, pale, faded pools of hazel with the earliest milky formations of cataracts. His hair was a shock white mane over taut, deeply creased skin.

Freddy was sick. He could see it in his reflection. "Do you think this time we'll be together?"

I don't know, Freddy. What did you find?

Freddy coughed. He tasted blood in his mouth. "I met with Grady today, and sent him out with that absurd manuscript."

It isn't absurd, Frederick. It is beautiful. You have the heart of a poet.

"I wouldn't buy it if I had to hear it."

You will believe it when you hear it.

"I need to get some rest. Would you like to sleep in my bed tonight?"

What did you find?

"I hid it in my plot at the crypt. I hid it so she couldn't have it. We're almost there."

Come, Frederick. Let us to bed. You do not look so well.

"Oh, I'm fine, woman."

Fereshte's giggling echoed off the attic walls.

♚ ♚ ♚

Freddy opened his eyes to cold tears on his cheeks, sending cleansing salt streams through the sticky blood coating his cheek. Pain jolted through his shoulder, and his hair stuck to the granite stone floor of the crypt, glued by his own dried blood.

"Mmmnh..." Freddy sat up. Outside, shifting orange light flickered through the windows. "I think I'd rather have a hangover."

Freddy stood onto shaky legs. He forced his hand into his back pocket and drew his cellphone.

The phone was shattered.

"Well that sucks." Freddy braced himself against the wall of the crypt.

...I hid it in my plot at the crypt. I hid it so she couldn't have it. We're almost there...

Freddy snapped his attention toward the plot in the crypt.

Of course he would hide it in his own grave. It is the first and last place he would look.
His coffin - Frederick's coffin - was bricked in. He did not have time for pleasantries, or traditions for respecting the dead, especially if the dead was himself.

Sort of.

Freddy shoved his uninjured shoulder into the bricks. No give. He did it again. The bricks shifted.

Freddy did his best samurai kiai scream and pushed his shoulder into the bricks as hard as he could, and was rewarded with the bricks collapsing over the crypt floor.
The space was empty, void of a body, or bones, or a coffin. Empty except for an envelope sitting beneath a black marble obelisk paperweight.

Freddy felt a chill run through him, absent in the night's air.

He reached into the empty plot in the crypt and withdrew from it the black marble obelisk. It was colder, and heavier in his hands than expected. The obelisk had a small fracture over its edge as it tapered to its pyramidal point; in the fracture were only a few brittle, short coarse black hairs.
Freddy's nose began to ran as his tear ducts drained I to his sinuses, and it was all he could do to keep from crying. At that moment the only thing he knew he wanted to do was throw the obelisk into the ground and shatter it.
Something inside him refused to allow it, warning him his absolute regret should he destroy it. Freddy, wounded, sore, and worse for wear, slid the obelisk into his pocket
He eyed the envelope, considering for a moment the very real possibility he may leave it there, and go.

Freddy carefully slid the envelope out into his charred hand, and while in excruciating pain, he opened it.

Frederick - Freddy I imagine - if you're here, then I'm long dead. It means Gabrielle has gotten to me, and I refused to give her Fereshte's anchor.
By now I am certain you're a believer, or you wouldn't be here. Please tell Fereshte she was right about the damned existential romance crap I wrote in my manuscript.
I'm sorry you're mixed up in all this, but the fact you're reading this at all means you've figured out a way to succeed what I could not.

Beneath this crypt are catacombs. I do not know how long they've been, or who built them, but I know there is an unmarked grave bearing the bones of a madwoman whose soul has long overstayed its welcome here in Hope Valley.

Bring the anchor to Fereshte. Tel her it was the tool that French madwoman used to kill her.

Ask Fereshte to touch it...

...and be prepared to lose her for the rest of your life in this world.

Destroy the anchor, and free her. Free us, Frederick. Do that, and when you meet your final end, we'll finally be with Fereshte.

Your life is going to be lonely, I imagine. Fill it with the things that bring you joy, so that your journey to the end is not so bad.

I'm counting on you - you're counting on you - every incarnation of We the You have been since we first began this long cursed life.

Finish this, Freddy. Let's put an end to all the suffering.

Good luck,

Frederick Gordon

Freddy wanted to burn the letter. Not for any revelation of who he was, or who the letter writer was, or wasn't. He knew that, already.

Accepting that all this was real was fine, except it meant he had to accept he finally found love, and not only had to let it go, but willingly destroy it.

On purpose.

Outside his crypt, the library was a smoldering pile of burning books, simmering to cinders in their dry ashes.

The rest of Hope Valley was burning down.

All but one house.

♚ ♚ ♚

The world burned.

Freddy's trek through the graveyard, little more than a speeded limp accompanied by weight of Feteshte's death - the black marble obelisk - heavy and cold in his pocket.

Freddy's car - Grady's car - was still parked in front of the library. Except, by now it probably was as much as a skeletal remains of a car as any of the long derelict vehicles abandoned to Hope Valley. As skeletal as anything in the catacombs Freddy set ablaze.

Freddy felt a steady trickle of warmth down the back of his neck, soaking into his shirt. His head still bleeding a little, though he had little time to worry over it.

The wound on his cheek, the one from the old, rusted nail, burned and throbbed with a dull ache. He could feel his pulse in his scalp, his cheek, and his shoulder, all at once.

Freddy cleared the cemetery gates and waited a moment to see if Gabrielle was going to appear. After ten minutes, with no signs of Gabrielle, Freddy continued onward to the only property not on fire.

♚ ♚ ♚

Frederick!

"Fereshte! You're still here!"

Freddy felt the semi-tangible embrace of Fereshte's arms around him, her kisses in his face, and neck. He winced as she grazed his wounded cheek.

What happened to you?

Freddy opened his mouth to respond, grunted and fell over.

♚ ♚ ♚

Wake up, Frederick.

Freddy shifted in her bed, the duvet heavy on him. "I'm so thirsty."

You are feverish.

Freddy smiled weakly. "You so can't tell by touching me."

Your skin may well be glowing. Your wounds look angry. You were sweating until you had nothing left to sweat.

Freddy nodded. "It explains why I'm so thirsty."

Not funny. You're hurt. You're sick. Frederick, look at your hand! We need to get you home! Where is your automobile?

"Probably melted down by now, filling in the cracks in the asphalt."

Frederick Gordon what did you do?

Tension built in the room. Freddy winced as though she were going to strike him. He heard her voice in his ear, felt her ethereal breath hot on his neck. "Freddy, tell me please, what have you done?"

He coughed, tasting blood in his mouth, and immediately the memory of his dream returned to him. "I finished what we started last time."

You never came back.

"Yeah, you can blame your fucking psychopath nutcase housekeeper for that."

Gabrielle?

"Oui." Freddy mimicked Gabrielle's accent, to his surprise and satisfaction, pretty well.

Now is not the time for Norwegian accents, Frederick.

Maybe not as well as he hoped. "Did you know I wrote myself instructions?"

No.

"Yep. In fact, I instructed myself to tell you that you were right about the damned manuscript."

You sound so much like you.

Freddy laughed weakly, coughed a little, and tasted a little more blood. "I put Gabrielle out of her misery. I resolved her haunting with extreme prejudice."

How?

"I decided to burn her. The catacombs, too... and the library. Also, basically most all of Hope Valley."

I noticed.

"...fire's made it a good point to avoid you."

Of course it would. Why should I have the same freedom as Gabrielle.

"I think have an answer for that, too."

Never you mind that for now. You need rest Frederick.

Freddy felt sudden alarm, "No!" He sat upright, and the agony in his should crept down his shoulder into his pectoral, burning the entire way, his nerves screaming. "Fereshte, this may be it for me... I can't let you go on not knowing if I fail again!"

Just tell me what you're talking about, then. Please!

"This." Freddy struggled with his pocket for a moment, and finally produced the black marble obelisk.

That! Where did you get that? Frederick, I thought I lost it!

"Gabrielle had it. I took it from her. Last time. Cost me my life from what I understand."

You live still, Frederick.

"Past me. Dead me. Me from last time. Burning down in the catacombs at an unmarked spot where they stowed Gabrielle."

Unmarked?

"She went down for murder. They hanged her good." Freddy coughed. "We can get you home, baby."

...what will happen to you? You need a physician, Frederick.

"Nah. I ain't going nowhere. I've no car, no phone, I can't walk outta here. I'm all outta juice, baby doll."

Stupid man, why? Why would you do this to yourself?

Freddy held up the Obelisk in his good hand. "So I can undo this to you."

♚ ♚ ♚

This must be what it's like to be Randall Gibbons.

Freddy heaved for breath, sitting with his back to the wall in Fereshte's attic ossuary, minus the actual bones.

Frederick, we must find you help.

Freddy held his burned hand snugly to himself, his tight expression a valiant attempt at masking his pain.

He held the obelisk out in his good hand.

No.

"If I died right now, it could be another lifetime - or more - before you found rest."

If I find rest, who will take care of you, Frederick Gordon?

"Probably that raging fire outside." He smiled weakly.

That's not funny, Frederick.

He coughed. "You can call me Freddy."

You can find help.

"Sure. I'll just hop on my chevrolegs, and hop right on the two-ten."

Chevrolegs? What is a two-ten?

"Chevrolegs. Walking? Two-ten... two feet, ten toes? It's not funny if you have to explain it."

It's not funny at all, Frederick. I can't just leave you alone!

"Good. Stay here and help usher me off to a more painless death. I'll see you in another twenty years or so. Of course you'll have to remind me all over again."

Please do not be cruel.

"Take this damned pointy thing."

Obelisk.

"Hey, look! A math award. That's from a hilarious movie." Freddy smiled, weakly, dropping the obelisk next to his feet.

Frederick! Frederick! Freddy Gordon! Freddy!

Fereshte's voice echoed through Freddy's head.

He kept his weak smile as he went to greet the unknown in thick, silent darkness.

♚ ♚ ♚

Freddy opened his eyes. He was laying in the bed in Fereshte's former ossuary.

Freddy, I thought you died.

"I feel like death slipped me a Mickey."

I know the feeling.

"Sorry."

Frederick, you're in a bad way. How are you going to get out of this one?

"I need you to bring me that obelisk please."

No, it's on fire.

"No it isn't, Fereshte."

No, Frederick, it really is. It is flickering in blue flame, and it weeps the saddest sorrows.

"I'm going you back your black marble obelisk. It is now yours again. You have to bring it to me. I am too sore to get up and get it myself."

It will burn me.

"I promise you, it will not." Freddy held up his charred hand, and flexed it. Pieces of crisp black flesh flaked away, revealing raw, angry, glistening flesh beneath. "Please don't make all my body modifications for nothing."

Freddy coughed, feeling a substantial amount of blood fill his mouth. He attempted to swallow it, gagged, choked, and coughed again. The blood sprayed across his chin, and into the dirty deathbed in fat droplets. "Please."

The black marble obelisk trembled, at first, and suddenly it was up, off the floor and in Fereshte's hands.

Freddy could see her. All of her. Only one of her.

"Frederick... can you see this?" There was a faint blue-green flicker of ghost flame on the obelisk, and it spread from Fereshte's object - her anchor - over her hands.

She looked entranced, to Freddy. The obelisk itself made a low, pitiful sound, a sad song - a dirge - which faded more, and more as the blue-green ghost fire spread over Fereshte's hands, crawling up her hands, over her shoulders, and engulfing her rapidly after that.

A moment later, Fereshte gasped, a genuine gasp, dropping the obelisk. The object's fracture widened in its short journey from Fereshte's hands, to the floor of the attic, splitting along its fissure into two pieces when it struck the wooden floorboards.

Fereshte looked from her broken marble sculpture, to Freddy. "My father have me that when I was sixteen years on the world. He said it would end my nightmares, and sing me to sleep."

"Did it?"

"I kept it always at my bedside, and you know that place between asleep and awake? There I dreamed of a place called Arcadia."

"Arcadia..." Freddy felt faint.

"...it was always spring. Always beautiful. I thought it was heaven. I thought: when I die, this is where I want to go."

Freddy jammed his palm against his forehead. "Mmmnh... Sounds beautiful. Do you see a white light, or anything?"

"Freddy, I have to go."

"I know that." Freddy propped himself up on shaky elbows. "That was the idea."

"What will you do?"

"Die, if I'm lucky. Live, probably. I've never been that lucky."

Will you walk me out?

♚ ♚ ♚

Freddy found the strength to stand beside Fereshte. She was solid as she would ever be, and he found himself desperate to hold her, but it did not happen. He walked her to the door of the ossuary, an she was simply gone, and empty space where she was arm in arm with him.

Across from him in the attic a few feet from the window, she stared outside. "I never told you how busy it is outside."

"I've heard." He limped out of the ossuary to her side, an stared out the dirty window.
The city burned, and it's light was an amber dawn painting the night sky, and cracked asphalt streets.

Which were no longer empty?

The bustling streets were busy as any town, filled with people from many eras, and Freddy saw Fereshte down there among them, and no longer at his side.
She stared up at him, as he stared down at her. Fereshte raised an arm, flickered a moment, and she was gone.
The lanterns, the candles, the warmth that was her as her home was gone instantly, as quickly as a light switch flicks off; it was only Freddy now, in some stranger's house, amidst a burning city.

Alone.

Freddy carefully climbed down from the attic. The glow of the fiery town that was once Hope Valley lit his way through the dead house.
Freddy did not look back, not once, as he limped out the front door into the street.

"Beloved Darkness." He began walking in the center of Hope Valley's lonely road. That's what he would call his investigative piece.

Beloved Darkness.

His life was finally what he always hoped it could be, and he bore the wounds, and scars for it. A tale of love, and murder to traverse time through generations.

He would have to sell the idea as an entertainment piece, maybe a romantic fiction, neo-Victorian-gothic.

Paranormal romance.

Freddy laughed. No one wants to read a paranormal romance. He would write it anyway.

He could make it to the highway, and if he continued the wrong way again, he could make that strange little township, with its cafés, pubs, live bands and cigar smoke.

Freddy wandered, and as he did, he wondered if Jack Spade's invitation to meet the PRDS' investigation in Corona, California was still up for grabs.

Heart broken, body broken, burned, and infected; his very life lingering on the edge, Freddy smiled.

It hurt. Bad.

...but it was his pain, and this pain was the beginning of an adventure.

The adventure was all his.